>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for joining
us for Inside Baseball,
Baseball Collections as Data.
This morning we're going
to hear a lot about a week
of rapid prototyping, designing,
collaboration, a little bit
of scrambling, maybe a
dash of magic as well.
First I'd like to
introduce you to our Director
of Digital Strategy
at the Library
of Congress, Kate Zwaard.
Kate's going to share
a little bit more
about the work that's
happening here at the Library,
and we are delighted to
have her here with us.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Kate Zwaard: Thank
you so much, Meghan.
I'm thrilled to be here
to open today's events.
I'm Kate Zwaard, the Library
of Congress's Director
of Digital Strategy.
And on behalf of the
Library of Congress, LC Labs,
the National Museum of African
American History and Culture,
and JSTOR, I'd like
to welcome everybody
to the Coolidge Auditorium.
We're excited to
be able to share
with you today a week's
worth of very focused work.
As you all know, Dr. Hayden
has brought a new vision
to the Library that we be
more user-centered and focused
on how we can reach
more people and interact
with them at a deeper level.
And technology, I think,
is a really great enabler
of that kind of work.
This event highlights how
we can effectively partner
with our users and
create prototypes
that will make us more
effective and efficient.
We'll be publishing a digital
strategy for the Library
of Congress in September
which will describe our plans
for reaching more
users with technology
and enabling further
access to our materials.
To accomplish that work
we're going to lean on labs
and their ability to try new
things and test our assumptions.
One of the things I love about
the culture of labs is our --
that we do things in the open
so that while we're learning
we're helping other learn.
So we've learned to much from
JSTOR Labs here this week.
We're thrilled that
they're here with us.
So that's a great, great segue
into the past week and today.
It's been a lively week
of looking at collections
and new ways of engaging users
inside and outside of our walls
and of flash-building.
It's been a week of
shared learning and a week
of demonstrating the power
of computational
access to collections.
We love thinking about the
different ways our collections
can be understood and power
of computation brings up a lot
of more opportunities.
Today's going to be a
really thrilling day.
We've got some wonderful
speakers up ahead.
And we're going to get to
see some fantastic datasets
and prototypes which will be
useful to baseball researchers
and data analysis and,
hopefully, can form a model
for other types of collections.
It's always fun to show what
could be quickly put together
when great minds are together.
We'll be hearing from LC
Labs, from the National Museum
of African American History
and Culture, and JSTOR.
And this afternoon
I'm excited to share
that we'll have Clinton Yates,
Rob Ruck, and Jordan Ellenberg
in a panel discussion.
Okay? As the unofficial
umpire here, play ball!
[ Applause ]
>> I'm Jaime [laughter].
Okay, yeah.
So my name is Jaime Mears,
and I work for the LC Labs
team that Kate mentioned.
I'm going to talk
a little bit --
I'm going to try to
frame the day for you,
which is a big task, because
it's a little confusing.
For those of you who dropped
in for the event today,
the biggest point that I want
you to know from the start is
that we've been working
since Monday around the clock
to put together flash
build products
to help people research baseball
and discover our collections.
And it's kind of crazy
that we did that.
It's a very vulnerable exercise,
and it's been really,
really fun.
It's required all of us to
really trust each other.
And so here we go.
I'm going to try to help
explain why we did this
and why we're here.
So inside baseball.
This is the look
at inside baseball.
I wanted to kick this
off with one of our --
an item from one of the Library
of Congress's baseball
collections.
It's a picture of an
indoor baseball team
in Chicago, 1897 I believe.
And it's considered to be --
they're considered to be
the first softball team
that ever existed.
They seem more dapper than a lot
of the other baseball
pictures I've seen so far.
People may be playing inside.
I don't know.
Makes you age better.
This is inside baseball to
me when I think about it
which may be scary
to some people here.
So inside baseball
underneath is essentially data
and it's so much work.
But it's so worth it, and
so, hopefully by the end
of this presentation
you'll see why I love this.
So this is a picture
of the LC Labs team.
If we were on a baseball card --
you know how they used to
do those like action shots
for teams that were staged.
This is not staged, but it's
not very dynamic either.
But if LC Labs had an
action baseball card,
this would probably be us,
just kind of standing around
and problem-solving
together around a whiteboard.
I wanted to mention
that our team --
you got Abby Potter here
who you'll actually see
her face quite soon, me,
and Megan Ferriter,
who introduced the day.
Not featured here
is half of our team.
We just expanded to three more
people and they've joined us
because we're launching a
crowdsourcing transcription
and tagging application that's
going to launch in the fall.
So if you -- if this talk makes
you interested in data at all,
and you want to take
a hand in it,
then that opportunity is
going to happen quite soon.
Okay. So I wanted to talk
a little about our goals
because they feed directly into
why we did this event this week.
It's difficult for me -- wait.
So the first one is enable
transformational experiences
by connecting users
with the Library
and its digital collections.
So some people, people
ask us all the time,
how do you measure impact?
And the way that we think about
it is if you see a photograph,
for example, whether it's
a dataset or a single item,
and it transforms the way that
you think about American history
and culture, then
we've done our job.
So that was partly the impetus
for the flash build this week.
And then our second big
goal is to prototype ideas
and build relationship
with stakeholders
that will realize the
Library's digital strategy.
So you heard from Kate earlier
we're launching a digital
strategy, a new digital
strategy, and it's Lab's job
to pilot some of those ideas in
small safe ways to see whether
or not they work for the Library
of Congress's environment.
And then the last goal is
to strengthen our community
by sharing our work for
transparency, feedback,
and knowledge exchange.
So that's what we're doing
now in a very extreme sense
because we're going to
demo something for you live
that no one has ever
seen before.
So another point of
this whole week is
that we spent a whole lot
of time documenting all
of the exercises we went
through through the flash build,
all of the decisions
we made about --
around data transformation,
and that's something
that's a little scary
to do out in the open.
But we feel it's
really important
because we all learn
from each other.
So, hopefully, by the end of
the day there'll be a link
that we're going to share
through social media, et cetera,
pointing you to where
all our documentation is
so that you can take this back
to your own cultural
heritage institutions
or anywhere you work to think
about how you could
incorporate user-centered design
into what you do.
Okay. And labs.loc.gov
is our home.
If you want to follow us you
can sign up for our listserv.
But essentially this is the
main place to find, you know,
information about us and the
prototype that we're going
to demo is going to live
here in our Experiments page.
Okay. So LC Labs.
Who are we?
Where did we come from?
Two years ago, a little over two
years ago now, we were formed
and we hosted an event
called Collections as Data,
and we've actually done
that now two years running.
And the point of Collections
as Data, if any of you went,
was an all-day symposium
talking about what does it mean
to use data in cultural heritage
institutions, to get the public
to use it, what types of
possibilities are there
for thinking about
how to interact
with collections online
in different ways.
And the first two years, the
symposiums were very talky,
just like I'm doing now.
You know, it was a lot of
experts coming together
to discuss these
really important issues.
What we wanted to do this
year was take a spin off
of Collections as Data and
actually just build something.
So that's kind of
the -- I would say
that in some ways this is
an unofficial third year
of Collections as Data,
but we're taking all the
lessons we've learned
and actually incorporating
them into the way that we work.
So what do I mean by
Collections as Data?
This is an example here of a
tutorial of how to use our API
if you were investigating
our baseball collections
which we have many of.
So one of the things
that we know is
that people are aware
perhaps of what an API is.
It's the underlayer
of information that's
underneath a website
that you can make calls to.
But there's some
intimidation of what it means
or how it could possibly be
useful to someone who happens
to stumble upon our Lab site.
So we've done a lot of work on
our site on a page called LC
for Robots of tutorials
for you to learn how
to perhaps investigate
our collections
through the data itself.
And I encourage you
to look at that
if you get inspired
by this event.
This is another example
of Collections as Data.
This is an example of a
product that was built
by our Innovator-in-Residence,
so this is a program
that we started.
And our current
Innovator-in-Residence is the
Data Artist, Jer Thorp.
And the idea behind the
Innovator-in-Residence Program
is to try to inspire people to
think about collections and how
to explore them serendipitously
in innovative ways.
And underlying that is data.
So this example is the Library
of Color that Jer built.
And what you're seeing
right now is an example
of a visual collection
where he took information
from every single record
from prints and photographs
and essentially compared
this to --
took words that you could
extrapolate to color
and then visualized those
colors into a rainbow.
And this is a screenshot.
But if you were to use a
strapdown, for example,
and look at our literature
collection visualized in color,
you'd essentially see blue
and black because it turns
out that a lot of titles of
books tend to represent darkness
or the ocean or something
like that.
So you can actually, I think,
intuitively work your way
through the collections
and start
to extrapolate some theories
around formats and titles,
plus it's just beautiful,
which is also fun
and valid in its own right.
This is another take on
exploring the Library by color.
This is an experiment that
exists on our Experiments page
that was made by Laura Wrubel,
who was a Software
Development Librarian
in Residence with us at LC Labs.
And what you're seeing
here is one
of our photograph
collections extrapolated
into color palettes.
So each of these swatches of
color represents one item.
And if you were to click
on it you'd jump back
to our lc.gov collection and
be able to explore that item.
And she did visualize the
baseball card collection,
so if you're curious
about seeing that,
I would suggest you go onto
our Experiments site and look
at the baseball one because
it's incredibly beautiful
and colorful.
Okay. So I've talked a little
bit about how we've kind
of had people come to the
Library to work with us,
to experiment with our
collections and our data
in new ways to get
the public interested.
This was a different angle
of trying to do that.
We essentially wanted a wide
swath of people to create,
and so we hosted a challenge
called the Congressional Data
Challenge and the point
of it was to get people
to produce some type
of application or tool
with legislative
data on congress.gov.
And to our surprise -- so we
had a $5000 first place winner
and a $1000 best
high school winner.
We had 17 entries.
They were all pretty stellar.
And these two high
schoolers, Alan Gomez Tagel
and Carter Neilsen, who are
going to be here next week
to get an award in person,
won the First Place Prize.
So we ended up having our first
and second place winners
being high school students
out of all 17 which was amazing
and also made us really hopeful
that the future is looking
bright, that there are people
who are really interested
in taking our collections
and creating things out of them
in a way that's very active,
and that's definitely
what we want to see.
So you can look at all the other
apps through challenge.gov.
There's 12 that were
submitted publicly.
Carter and Alan's is up there,
the U.S. Treaties Explorer.
But there's a bunch
of other ones.
So if you are interested
in congressional data,
I encourage you to take a look.
Okay. So where we're going --
what does this have
to do with this week?
So Collections as Data,
essentially doing it instead
of just talking about it,
we were really inspired
by the Baseball Americana
Collection
because baseball
has a lot of stats.
There's a lot of data.
It's also a topic that
has a very wide reach.
And so we thought it would
be a way to get enthusiasts
and members of the
general public thinking
about what we're obsessed
with, which is data.
So JSTOR Labs approached us,
wanted to play ball with us,
wanted to do something.
And, you know, we thought,
oh, why don't we do something
around baseball collections.
So it's something that we
can definitely do together.
So we essentially are
being led by JSTOR
through this effort this week.
They are facilitating us through
the first Data Jam that we did
as a team, through the first
flash build we did as a team.
But we're also competing
with each other
because we're both going
to demo our own tools
that we've been working
on separately.
Let's just be real
is what's happening.
And so it's been really
fantastic to learn from them.
This is not their first rodeo.
They've done this with a bunch
of other cultural
heritage institutions.
And it's really been fantastic.
Another partner of --
or collaborator of ours this
week is the National Museum
of African American
History and Culture.
So although they haven't been
with us kind of sweating it
out over keyboards for
the past four days,
[inaudible] been working with
us for the past several months
to essentially combine some of
the baseball digital collections
with the Library of Congress's.
So, not to give too
much away, but the demo
that our LC Labs team
worked on this week is going
to let you kind of
seamlessly view National Museum
of African American History
and Culture baseball items
with Library of Congress items.
So it's really, really special.
And that is what you see here.
So this is an exercise in love
because when you're talking
about bringing data together,
it's really a negotiation
of you know what is valuable
to you and your institution
and how you show
your collections.
So this is, I think, one of
the best resources that's going
to come out of this event.
This was the Data Jam that
we did, and the whole purpose
of this slide is essentially
to say that there's a lot
of people behind the
scenes that worked on this.
We had curators from our
Photographs and Prints Division.
We had baseball researchers.
And then, of course, our
LC Labs team and JSTOR.
It was a full house of people
trying to figure out how
to build things that would
get researchers interested.
Grif doesn't know I
put this slide in.
So another thing that was
really wonderful about this is
that the LC Labs team
got to work hand-in-hand
with Chris Adams, the
software developer
and Grif from UX designer.
And we got to build
this tool together
which usually doesn't happen.
We kind of, you know,
work inside in silos
and a project gets
passed around.
But it was awesome
to see everyone's expertise
play out in real time.
So this is Grif drawing
a very small preview
of what you're going
to see later --
wireframe of our
application that we built.
So, hopefully, that set
the stage a little bit.
I really wanted to make sure
that everybody here was aware
of just how much work has
gone into the week leading
up to what you're about to see.
And for LC Labs, if
you're interested in any
of the experiments
that I shared with you
or you want more information
about the Congressional Data
Challenge or other challenges
that might be coming up, you
can email us at ndi@loc.gov,
follow us on Twitter at LC
Labs, follow us on our Listserv,
or go to our website
at labs.loc.gov.
Okay. So that's it for me.
So now I'm going to pass
it off to a collaborator
that I just mentioned,
the National Museum
of African American History and
Culture's Museum Specialist,
Courtney Bellizzi
and Emily Houf.
[ Applause ]
>> Emily Houf: Good morning.
I'm Emily Houf and this
is Courtney Bellizzi.
And we're part of
the Digitization Team
at the Smithsonian
National Museum
of African American
History and Culture.
Our team catalogs the Museum's
objects, digitizes them,
and helps make the collection
information accessible
and discoverable for both
users inside the Museum
and outside the Museum.
And today we're going to
talk to you a little bit
about the objects that we
featured in this dataset
for this project and how
we cataloged them and walk
through the datapoints together.
The goal of the Museum is
to present American history
through an African
American lens.
And what is more
American than baseball?
Although we knew the sport
of baseball plays
a significant role
in the exhibition sports
levelling the playing fields,
and we're familiar with some
of our baseball objects,
we hadn't really ever done
a deep dive into the --
our baseball-related holdings
until we did this project.
Once we pulled the data
together and began looking
at the various subjects and
object types that connect
with the term baseball, we
were not surprised to see
that America's favorite
sport appears all the way
through our collection, from Jim
Crow segregation in Mississippi
to the early days of
Hip-Hop in New York City.
Looking at the numbers
within the dataset,
we have baseball objects
from 22 states including --
and the District of Columbia.
16% of our objects are
from New York City and 8%
of our baseball-related objects
also have stories to tell
about the American South.
If we compare types of objects,
8% are items of clothing
like jerseys and hats,
30% are part of the class
of objects we call
memorabilia and ephemera --
things like tickets,
programs, pennants,
pin-back buttons,
and autographs.
The most well-represented class
of objects are photographs
and images, making up
44% of the dataset.
Analyzing the subject terms
connected to baseball --
a remarkable 34% of our
collection, baseball collection,
have stories related
to segregation,
like this 1920s wood sweater
for the Eastern Colored League,
and 4% of our objects
are related to musicians
such as this Texas Ranger's
uniform worn by Charlie Pride.
Before he became one of country
music's most successful artist
ever, Pride was a
baseball player.
He was a pitcher for
the Memphis Red Sox
and other Negro League teams
before he ever kissed an angel
good morning.
Pride is now part owner
of the Texas Rangers
and at 84 years old still
trains with them every spring.
We're able to connect baseball
across various collections
and subject areas
because we're committed
to consistent cataloguing
throughout our collection,
using the same standards,
vocabularies, and approach,
regardless of department.
This allows us to tie
together thematic threads
that appear throughout
the collection --
things like identity,
resistance, connection, and job.
Starting with baseball, we
can follow the datapoints
through the three pillars
of history, community,
and culture that
form the collection.
>> Courtney Bellizzi:
Good morning.
So we're going to start with
our history collections,
and since it's All Star week
it's only appropriate to start
with a collection object that
harkens back to the beginning
of the All Star Games.
This pennant from about 1933
celebrates the Negro League's
East-West All Star Game.
The Negro Leagues established
in 1885 gave African American
ballplayers who, due to racism,
were not accepted to play in
other major and minor leagues,
a chance to play professionally.
The East-West All Star Game
began in 1933, the same year
that the MLB All Star
Game was established.
The game was generated to
start as a way for the owners
to generate money essentially.
But the game became
so much more.
It was a way to help legitimize
the Negro League teams
and the African American
professional baseball players.
The game was the
preeminent sporting event
for African Americans.
Celebrities like Count
Basie, Alice Fitzgerald,
Joe Lewis would attend,
and Lena Horne even threw
out the first pitch of the
very first All Star Game.
And though these games were
celebrated, they still stood
as a stark reminder that
professional baseball,
like many aspects of American
society, was segregated.
When we look at the datapoints,
the term segregation is used
to convey this very
important aspect of history.
The term also links
us to our next object,
a poster about the integration
of the Detroit Tigers.
This is nicely [inaudible] done.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson
stepped onto the field to play
for the Brooklyn Dodgers
and desegregated
Major League Baseball.
Not all teams were
quick to follow.
In 1958, the Detroit Tigers
were the second-to-last team
to integrate when Ozzie
Virgil, Senior joined the team.
Virgil was born in
the Dominican Republic
and was the first
person of African descent
to join the Tigers, and was
also the first Dominican
to play in MLB.
On June 6, 1958, Virgil went
five for five in his debut
with the Tigers, and despite
occurring more than 10 years
after Robinson's first
game, the integration
of the Tigers was
still met with protest
from staunch segregationists,
including Detroit City
Council Member Billy Rogell.
He was also a former shortstop
for the Detroit Tigers.
Rogell opposed Virgil's
appointment
to the team vehemently.
And this poster here sends a
clear message to Mr. Rogell
about his policies and
beliefs and gives us a glimpse
into race relations in the
city of Detroit in 1958.
As you can see, several
subjects have been attributed
to this object including
segregation,
civil rights, and
race relations.
Using the term race relations,
we can move to our next
related object type,
a magazine from 1960
featuring notable African
American athletes.
As professional sports
became integrated,
African American athletes
soon became household names.
Though African American
athletes became mainstream,
they were still viewed as other
as evidenced by this issue
of Sport Magazine from 1960.
The title of the issue
is "Sport, Special Issue,
the Negro in American Sport."
And it still conveys this idea
that African American
athletes needed to be looked
at separately from their
white counterparts.
The term race relations
was used for this object
because Sports Magazine was
founded in 1946 and was one
of the first national
sports publications,
and serves as an example
of how African American
athletes' achievement were
covered by mass media.
The magazine features
notable athletes include Wilt
Chamberlain, Willie Mays, Althea
Gibson, and Jackie Robinson.
From a data perspective, all of
these athletes become subjects
of the collection object,
so that this object appears
when any of the aforementioned
names are searched.
Let us look at the
datapoint Jackie Robinson
to move along to
our next dataset.
Our next set of objects focus
around NMHC's collection
theme of community.
Using the subject term
Jackie Robinson and a search
of our internal databases
brings up a variety of objects,
including a ring,
magazines, and photographs.
The collection objects
span different aspects
of Jackie Robinson's career,
not only as a baseball player,
but as a family man and activist
who impacted both baseball
and African American community.
For instance, let's take a look
at this photograph from 1954
of Jackie Robinson
and Harry Owens.
Here Robinson is out of uniform,
receiving a Lifetime
Membership Award
to the Irene Kaufmann
Settlement House in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania for
his charity work.
The photograph was taken
by a community photographer
named Charles "Teenie" Harris.
Harris was founded --
Harris had a connection
to baseball actually because he
helped found and was a player
for the Crawford Colored Giants
who later became the
Pittsburgh Crawfords.
So there's another little
baseball connection in there.
But Harris was known as
"One-Shot," not in a reference
to his baseball career, but in
reference to his photography.
His photography mainly
focused on the Hill District
which is a African American
community in Pittsburgh,
and his more than
80,000 images provide one
of the most complete
documentations
of a minority community
in the United States.
When cataloging this
photograph, it's important
that the data not only leads
us to these researchers,
to Jackie Robinson, but
also to "Teenie" Harris,
the notable community
photographer.
Using another datapoint from
this object, the date, 1954,
it will lead us to
another photograph taken
by another community
photographer, Ernest C. Withers.
Around 1954, Ernest C.
Withers took this portrait
of Connie Morgan.
Withers, a well-known
photojournalist,
documented African
American communities
in the segregated
South for 60 years.
Morgan was the third woman
to play professional
baseball in the Negro League.
She joined the Indianapolis
Crowns in 1954
as a second baseman and
replaced the first woman
who joined the Leagues,
Toni Stone.
Though many saw having women
join the teams as a gimmick
to increase sales after
the integration with MLB,
many journalists who covered
the Negro Leagues also wrote
about the women's skill
and talent as players.
For example, an article covering
the Crowns' game on May 29,
1954, featured in the Afro
American , noted, quote,
"Morgan electrified over
6000 fans when she went far
to her right to make
a sensational stop,
slip the shortstop, Bill Holder,
and started a lightning
double-play
against the Birmingham
Barons," end quote.
Morgan's great double play
excited this large community
of fans.
And what we find that's
so prevalent throughout our
Museum's Baseball Collections is
this tie to community.
This time, let us turn to
the object type Portraits
to see how this portrait of
Connie Morgan can link us
to another object
reflecting community
within the Museum's collections.
>> Emily Houf: The object
type Portraits brings us
to the collection
of the photographer,
the Reverend Henry C. Anderson.
Anderson was the local portrait
photographer in Greenville,
Mississippi from 1947
through the 1970s.
Nearly every m4mber
of the black community
of Greenville had their portrait
taken by Reverend Anderson
at one point or another.
Anderson documented all
aspects of Greenville's family
and community life during
Jim Crow segregation,
including new babies, birthdays,
weddings, anniversaries,
graduations, church groups,
community clubs, and, of course,
the Little League teams
like this one here.
So we've just seen how our
subject terms can take us
through several community
photographers.
But if we use the classification
Media Arts Photography,
where all of our photographs
and images are grouped under,
we can expand and will
find the IGME Collection
of Hip-Hop Photography
where perhaps, surprisingly,
we also find baseball.
This leads us to the Culture
section of our objects.
In this photograph of KRS-One
taken by Al Pereira in 1991,
the rapper sports
the iconic pinstripes
of the New York Yankees.
KRS-One is an influential
MC from the South Bronx.
He started his career as
part of the duo Boogey
Down Productions before going
solo after the shooting death
of his partner, DJ
Scott La Rock.
And being from the South
Bronx, KRS-One's affinity
for Yankees' gear
signifies his ties
to the birthplace of hip-hop.
Using athletic wear, and
baseball teams in particular,
in this way, is a common style
for hip-hop stars like KRS-One.
And if we follow the
term hip-hop we'll see
another example.
This is perhaps the supreme
example of the intersections
of baseball, music, and fashion,
the iconic baseball cap.
I learned recently, yesterday,
that baseball historians
credit Tom Selleck
with popularizing the
off-the-field baseball cap trend
in the 1970s.
But I think we can all agree
that hip-hop is largely
responsible
for the longevity of the trend.
This purple Atlanta Braves
cap from the rapper Big Boy,
who is one-half of
the group Outcast,
was made by the preeminent
manufacturer of baseball caps,
New Era Cap Company, which has
been making caps since 1920.
This particular hat was
a limited release in 2013
in conjunction with Big Boy's
solo album, "Vicious Lies
and Dangerous Rumors."
In early June, 2013, fans who
attended a CD signing by Big Boy
at the New Era store in Atlanta
also received this limited
edition hat inspired
by the album.
Big Boy and Outcast
is known as the group
that brought southern
hip-hop into the mainstream,
and Big Boy is seldom seen
without his signature Braves hat
to rep his home town of Atlanta.
This hat has the
sub-classification,
Clothing Fashion.
But if we follow the main class,
Clothing, or the subject term,
Clothing and Dress, we end up
back in the traditional world
of baseball with this Cardinals'
jersey that was [inaudible] worn
by Curt Flood in 1966.
Flood was an All-Star
player and a centerfielder
for the St. Louis Cardinals.
He won Gold Glove seven
consecutive seasons
from 1963 to 1969.
And during Flood's 11
seasons on the team,
the Cards won three pennants and
earned two World Series rings.
When Flood refused to accept a
trade away from the Cardinals
in 1969, his challenge to the
Reserve Clause helped in usher
in the Free Agency System
which was transformative
for the culture of baseball.
Flood wrote a letter to the
Baseball Commissioner reading,
"After 12 years in
the Major Leagues,
I do not feel I am a piece
of property to be bought
and sold irrespective
of my wishes.
I believe that any
system which produces
that result violates my
basic rights as a citizen
and is inconsistent with the
laws of the United States
and of the several states."
Flood's subsequent lawsuit
again Major League Baseball was
unsuccessfully argued in front
of the Supreme Court in 1972
which sided with the League.
But it eventually led to the end
of the reserve system
a few years later.
Twenty-six years later, with
the Curt Flood Act of 1998,
Congress declared Major
League Baseball subject
to antitrust laws like
any other corporation.
Flood is also responsible
for the 10-5 Rule,
which is often known as the
Curt Flood Rule which states
that when a player has play for
a team for five straight years,
and played in the Major League
for a total of 10 years,
they have to give the club
their consent to be traded.
Although Flood's
legacy is larger
than the time he spent playing
with the Cardinals, well,
we can use the team name to
follow to our final object,
Minnie Roundtree's Radio.
Mini Roundtree was a
diehard Cardinals fan,
living in the rural
community of Lyles Station
in Gibson County, Indiana.
Her husband, Herman,
bought her this radio
so that she could listen
to the games and keep
up with her favorite team.
And the story of Minnie and
her radio is a favorite of mine
because she reminds me of
my own grandmother who,
at 94 years old, never
misses a Cardinals game.
>> Courtney Bellizzi: Well,
thanks for taking the little
journey through our collections.
And it's just a small sample of
the collections that we shared
for the event with LOC.
But, as this graphic shows,
by following a variety
of datapoints we've been able
to share and explore this group
of baseball-related collections
from the Negro Leagues
to hip-hop.
We were able to connect each
object based on a set of terms,
classifications, and
cataloging fields.
However, we could have utilized
a totally different set of terms
and datapoints to come up
with a totally different set
of objects.
That's the exciting part about
our collaboration with LOC
and JSTOR and the
flash build team
who have taken a deep
dive into our data.
What is important is that the
data is consistent and clean.
And so that way people
can utilize it in ways
that we can't even imagine.
On behalf of Emily and myself,
we would like to thank our
NMHC Digitization Team,
the cataloguers
who painstakingly make sure
our records are accurate
and consistent, the curators
who review all of our records,
Doug Remley, Laura
Coil, Aileen Nichols,
and Damion Thomas [assumed
spellings] for its curator,
for their support on this
project, the team at Library
of Congress, especially Julia
Hickey who cleaned the data
and pulled together
the cross [inaudible],
nd the team at JSOR and,
again, the flash build team
who worked all this week
and participated in
this great event.
Thank you for having us
and I hope you enjoy
the rest of your day.
[ Applause ]
>> Abigail Potter: All right.
Thanks so much to the NMHC Team.
Next we have Alex Humphreys from
JSTOR Labs who's going to come
up and share about
what their wonderful is
and what they've been up to,
and you'll see the first
demo, hopefully [laughter].
>> Alex Humphreys: I don't
get to see the presentation,
or I do from a very
strange vantage point.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Alex Humphreys.
I'm the Director of JSTOR Labs.
And I want to start just by
thanking the Library of Congress
for being such amazing
hosts and going
on this very quick
adventure with us.
A week, a lot of things happen
in a week, and they have been
so supportive and eager
and in every step along
the way just wanted to jump
in with both feet and do.
And we find in our
team that learning
by doing is just the best
possible way, and we'll share
as we go some of the
things that we've learned.
So, first a little bit
of context just for those
of you are aren't familiar with
JSTOR or the JSTOR Labs Team.
JSTOR is a part a
nonprofit called ITHAKA
which helps the academic
community embrace
digital transformation.
We have a number of different
brands within it dealing
with digital preservation, with
art, and strategy and research.
JSTOR is a digital archive of
academic literature primarily,
so it's got 10 million
articles and tens of thousands
of academic books
spanning centuries
of the scholarly record.
So these are the
academic journals that,
if you're writing,
if you're a scholar,
or writing your dissertation,
you're doing that research,
and you do that often these days
online with tools like JSTOR.
It's especially prominent in the
humanities and social sciences,
and it has a number of --
it's multidisciplinary,
so if you are anywhere
within those fields,
you'll often dip into JSTOR.
There we go.
The JSTOR Labs Team is
a relatively small team
within that organization.
You know, there's
five/six/seven of us.
And our job is to build
experimental tools, and we --
to sort of show the future of
what research can look like.
We do it -- and the
best way to see that is
through some examples
which I'll walk you
through in just a second.
We approach all of these
projects collaboratively.
Wherever possible, we work
with partners like the Library
of Congress here,
and we do so openly.
So we share all the
work that we develop.
We share the code if we can,
the content wherever
a copyright allows,
and make that as
open as possible.
And we also do it as
quickly as possible,
all the way down to
doing things in one week.
So I think it will be helpful
just to get a feel for that
so see a few of the things
that we've done in the past.
These are a little
bit more polished
than what you'll see at the end.
But they'll give you a
feel for what we've done.
So if we can jump to the
browser that would be wonderful.
There we go.
Okay. So the first
project was --
we did this just
across the street
at the Folger Shakespeare
Library.
Developed it maybe about
a couple of years ago.
And this is Understanding
Shakespeare.
So if you're studying
Shakespeare,
what this allows you to do --
it has all of the
plays of Shakespeare,
and I'd go ahead and
click on any one.
It has all of the plays
of Shakespeare and
all of the texts.
And what we were trying
to do was find a new way
for those people who
were studying and writing
about Shakespeare to
research that work.
So you'll see this
the text of Hamlet .
The Folger Library has these
amazing digital editions
of Shakespeare which
are openly available.
When we approach these
projects they're not sort
of transactional, they're not --
they're very open
and collaborative.
And I describe them
often as play dates.
You have your toys
and I have my toys,
and let's go play
in that sandbox.
And their toys were these
digital editions of Shakespeare.
So if you see -- the play on the
left, and that's from Folger.
And in the middle there
are all those numbers.
If you click on one of
those numbers, that's --
each one of those is the
number of articles in JSTOR
that quote that specific line.
And we have that for every line
of every play of Shakespeare.
And then if you hover over
any of those, you can --
any of the thumbnails, you can
see how it quotes that article,
quotes that particular line.
And if you're a student, it
can help you interpret it.
If you're a scholar,
you can see how
that line has been
interpreted through the ages.
And if you're -- if you've
got a digital humanities bent,
you can -- we have
an API for this
so that you can build
visualizations on the -
how Shakespeare has been studied
and quoted through two centuries
of academic literature.
So this was released
a couple of years ago.
This is the kind of
tool that we build.
And this has had a
really great response.
It's now being included
in syllabi.
Teachers often tell us that
this is a really great way
for students to first dive
into academic literature
which can be really daunting and
hard with keyword search and --
it can be -- they're used to
Google and going to the library.
And this is a very easy
way to get into that.
We now just -- to give
you -- to tease something,
we're currently working
on an expansion
of this called Understanding
Great Works which we hope
to go live later this summer,
which will be this
same functionality
for more than Shakespeare.
It will include the Kings James
Bible as well as a selection
of British literature that we're
working on with the Studies
in English Literature
Journal .
So we're really excited
about that.
And if you're interested,
follow JSTOR Labs,
follow me on Twitter, and
we'll let you know, or JSOR.
So that's one tool.
We built the core of
this functionality
in a previous Labs Week,
and then we spent a lot
of time making it look prettier
and be a little bit
more perfect,
and adding the rest
of the plays.
So let's jump to another
example of something
that we've done,
a text analyzer.
As I said, academic
research can be daunting
and challenging and
in various ways.
And text analyzer we
envisioned as a different way
of doing research to
overcome some of the hurdles.
So text analyzer -- so for
those of you who aren't familiar
with it, academic
research is often done
through either citation mining,
meaning you follow bibliography
one to the next to the next,
or by keyword search like
you would do in Google,
but in an academic database
or in something called
Google Scholar.
But those keywords and all
that can be challenging
to a new student and if you're
doing the citation mining,
you can get stuck in a
particular, in a silo.
So what text analyzer does
is it changes that by instead
of searching with words,
you search with a document.
So if you've either found an
article that is already perfect
and about what you're
writing about,
or if you've written
the first draft
of your paper, you
can upload it.
So if we can drag the
sample document over.
You just drag and drop it over,
and what it does is it reads
the document and it figures
out what the document is about.
And it does that not just
by looking at the words,
but the implied words.
It uses a technology called
Natural Language Processing
and topic models to figure out
the implied words in addition
to the explicitly
mentioned ones.
It calls attention to those
and tells you what it found,
suggests another selection of
them in case there are some
that are really important to
you, and then gives you articles
in JSTOR, articles in book
chapters in JSTOR that are
about the same materials.
You can then, you
know, adjust the --
we call it the equalizer at
the top which is a metaphor
that probably nobody
gets anymore [laughter].
You can add new terms and then,
when you find the articles you
want, you can download this.
This actually just won an
award a couple of weeks ago,
which we're really
proud about, proud of.
And this is available
right on the JSTOR site.
All these tools that
we build are just
so -- are openly available.
The access to the
JSTOR Scholarship is --
that will often come
through your institution.
But if you're a -- if you're
not a member of a university
or a library, much of that
content is available for free.
Some of it with registration.
Some of it is pure open access.
Okay. That was the other example
of something we've done before.
Let's get to the fun stuff of
what we actually did this week.
So if we can go back
to the PowerPoint.
Great. We showed you that.
We showed you that.
All right.
So, first of all, we
wanted to build --
we knew that we wanted to build
a tool for -- about baseball.
And what I'll do is I'll
walk you through the process,
sort of the story
of this project.
It's the story that we've
been leading the Library
of Congress Team through this
week, and sort of enjoying
that process with them.
I will say, every time we
do this, it's different.
We're learning all the time
and trying to experiment.
This is the first time we've
done sort of the parallel play
of two teams working,
evidently in competition.
Here I thought it was
like the All Star Game
where it didn't matter.
And it turns out it's
like the All Star Game
where it totally matters.
But, it's okay.
We're up for that.
We're up for the battle.
So let me walk you this process.
This process -- we talked about
it, I should say, as something
that happens all in one week.
It's true.
A lot of work goes
on in that week.
But you can't -- I mean, you run
a marathon all in one, you know,
for me, five hour
[laughter] period.
But there's a lot of work
to prepare for these weeks.
So I don't want to minimize
all of the preparatory work.
That's really important
and it helps us
to run fast these weeks.
So I'll walk through those
-- that process a little bit
and then we'll show you what we
came out with at the other end.
Okay. So I mentioned earlier
when describing the Folger
Understanding Shakespeare
Project, that we treat these
projects kind of like playdates.
And we just decide
what is the sandbox.
When we talked to the
Library of Congress Team,
they suggested organizing this
around the Baseball Americana
Exhibit because baseball was
such -- it had so much
interest generally,
it was multidisciplinary, and
there could be a lot of interest
and multidisciplinary in
a way that aligns well
with JSTORs collection.
So focusing on baseball
seemed really exciting.
And I will say, personally,
I'm such a baseball nerd.
I'm so happy that
we could do this.
There was no way we were
not doing this as soon
as that was suggested.
This has been so much fun,
especially to meet some
of my favorite baseball
writers through this process.
So we knew we wanted
to work with baseball,
but what exactly were we
going to do with baseball?
We wanted a little
bit more definition.
And because the Library of
Congress Team had their content,
and JSTOR had our content, and
they're not exactly the same.
They're quite different.
And then when you bring in the
Smithsonian, the National Museum
of African American History
and Culture, their content --
we were really interested
in finding ways to bring all
of that content together to tell
a story and really make it sing.
And so we were interested
in trying to do
that using linked open
data which I won't get
into the technology of because
I'd probably mess that up.
But linked open data is
also called the Smart Web.
It's more than just links, but
it knows about the information.
And we've been working
through that with Wikidata,
a part of the Wikimedia
to enable that.
So I'll show a little bit
about what comes from that.
So the idea here was multiple
corpora, multiple collections
of content, and using linked
open data to connect them.
And that's what we wanted
to find a way to do.
I'll tell you a little bit
about the content in JSTOR
and how we went about
collecting that data.
We'll probably publish some
logs or something that get
into this in more detail.
But just so you have the context
for that, we started with --
by selecting a set of content
in JSTOR that is about baseball.
We did that using a
topic model similar
to what powers text
analyzer that you saw.
So it looked at all of the words
within every article to find
out the likelihood that that
article is about baseball,
even if the word is not used.
And we've ended up coming up
with about 25,000 articles
through the centuries of content
in JSTOR, articles in chapters
that were about baseball.
We then used some, again,
natural language processing
to pull out the people and
places and organizations
from those articles so
that we could connect it
into the other collections.
We then used Wikidata
to limit those people,
places and organizations to
those related to baseball.
Not all of the people in every
article was a baseball person.
We wanted to keep
it focused on --
really do a deep
dive on baseball.
And that allowed us to create
what's called a knowledge graph.
And then we were able to plug
into that knowledge graph
the material from Library
of Congress and the Smithsonian
and also some material,
some additional data
that's in Wikidata.
And that's as geeky
as we'll get.
At least that kind of geeky.
There's so many kinds of
geeky that we embrace.
So that's the preparation
on the technology side.
But that's not all that we do
in preparation for these weeks.
If we're building a tool
for baseball researchers,
people studying baseball,
we have some theories
about what might be helpful.
We know how people
research generally.
But we don't know the
exact issues facing
baseball researchers.
And so we solve that
problem by talking to them.
We did, I think,
seven interviews
with baseball researchers
of all sorts.
I talked to my favorite sports
journalist in the world.
We talked to Joe Posnanski.
He's awesome.
We talked to historians
of baseball,
cultural studies people.
We talked to students
and scholars.
And in doing that we tried
to understand what are their
challenges, what are the things
that they have to overcome
that's specific to baseball?
We had to understand their
goals and their practices
so that we could help them
achieve their goals a little
faster or overcome
one of the hurdles.
And so some examples
-- and this --
I should say this Joe
Pearlman is not a real person.
This is the embodiment
of those seven.
We sort of shoot them up,
wrapped them up, and put them
into one personification, and
it's Joe, who's a fine guy.
So, for example, they --
everybody we talked to that
taught the baseball history
related classes said that on
the first day of class they had
to overcome the fact
and tell their students
that this class is not
about last night's game,
it's not about how Brace
Harper's really stinking
this year.
It's about looking at America
and the story of America,
race relations and labor
relations and capitalism and all
of these wonderful --
and hopes and dreams.
But it's looking at the story
of America through baseball.
And the walkthrough that we
just got of the National Museum
of African American History
and Culture was really
such a great embodiment
of that story.
It was really wonderful.
And all of these people that
we talked to got as excited
about those stories and
wanting to be able to tell them.
I'd go through their
books or their lectures.
We wanted to find ways
to make it even easier
for them to do so.
So that was the work we did
over the past couple of months,
leading up to Monday when
we all came down here.
And the first thing we
did on Monday was --
I think Jaime had a
picture of this as well --
was lead a Design Jam.
And these are called a
few different things.
Sometimes called Design James.
I've called them Idea Jams,
Design Studios sometimes.
There are various ways --
it's a structured
brainstorming technique,
and there's a few different
steps that you go through.
And the first one is the one you
see here on these Post-It Notes
that Jessica, who's awesome, and
in the back, is ably leading.
An empathy map is a way to
highlight and bring together all
of that research on users
and baseball researchers
that we'd done.
Sort of brainstorming
what are their big goals,
what are the tasks
that they need to try
to achieve, what
are the hurdles?
Because those can spark
ideas for what we can do
to make -- to help them.
From there -- this was all --
this Design Jam was
a couple of hours.
It was a quick brainstorming
session.
We did something
called an eight-by-eight
which are what you see here.
You see pages and pages
of pieces of paper
with eight squares and everybody
in the room worked silently.
Had eight minutes to draw
eight different ideas.
They then presented their
ideas to the entire room,
and we did it again
sharing those ideas.
And it's a really wonderful
way to very quickly come
up with lots of ideas.
And these were all based on, and
responding to the empathy map.
They build on it, helping --
each one would help a
user achieve their goals
or overcome a hurdle.
And some of the ideas
aren't fully formed.
None of them are fully formed.
Some of them are
more fully formed.
But they help each other,
and it's a very generative
approach to brainstorming.
We then ended the
Design Jam by dot voting.
Everybody had three dots,
could choose the things
that were most exciting,
and that gave us a heat map
of the ideas that
were most exciting.
From there -- so we ended that
with five or six general ideas
that we were excited to explore.
But we need to have a way
to choose between those.
And one of the hallmarks, and
one of the important parts
of these Labs Weeks is
it's focused effort,
but it's iterative effort,
even within the week.
It's not just one week of work.
We've had baseball
researchers coming
in to pretty much
every day this week,
and at each step we'd be showing
baseball researchers our works
in progress, of where we are so
far, and using their feedback
to help us make decisions.
So at this point we had,
we created a set of
paper prototypes.
And you saw a picture
in Jaime's presentation
of Grif doing this
on the LC Team.
Paper prototypes of different
ways that we could go
about using linked open data
to help baseball
researchers do this.
There's a map.
There was a Chrome filter
that gave us a baseball lens
when you're reading
about anything.
And then there's this idea
called cultural history baseball
cards, and that's the one
that we ended up running with.
So then the rest of the week --
so by Tuesday we knew
what we wanted to build.
It might even have
been Monday afternoon.
So then it was about rapidly
refining and making --
turning that idea into a thing
that actually exists
in the world.
So this -- so I'll
show you quickly what
that evolution looked like,
and then we'll get
to the actual site.
So this was the Design
Jam sketch.
You can see it's pretty
unclear what it is.
It's very sketchy.
There's a couple -- a
little bit of a flow there.
And sometimes with these you'll
have multiple sketches all
talking about the same idea.
And we'll bring those together.
That turned into the paper
prototype which turned
into the first design mock-up
which we'd show on screen
to users to get feelings
for whether they liked --
whether the thought the
idea could be useful,
where they were confused,
what made sense.
At this point people
were getting confused
between baseball
cards and car --
and like they thought this was
a collection of baseball cards.
They weren't seeing the
links to the materials.
And there were all sorts
of other problems, too.
But that's why we
do the research.
And that makes it kind
of fun and exciting.
This is a further
refinement of the design.
And so now you can see
on the baseball card
for Jackie Robinson, the
cultural history baseball card.
You know, on a baseball card,
if you're familiar with them,
there's often physical
-- there's the stats,
their batting average,
their ERA, year-by-year
on the lower -- on
the back of the card.
But on the cultural
history baseball cards,
you can get that stuff,
those baseball stats
at baseballreference.com or
any other wonderful place.
Instead we have stats about
their cultural history.
So these are links to and stats
about the scholarly articles
about Jackie Robinson, the
number of photos or videos
or objects that are available
in the different collections.
So that's Library of Congress
and Smithsonian, Wikidata.
And so it sort of
gives a snapshot
of how much information we have.
And then you can dive into it.
So, with that I think we should
switch over to Chrome and see
where it is, see
what it looks like.
This is the -- there we go.
A quick, you know, caveat.
This is a week of work,
so the way you're going
to see is definitely
a work in progress.
There will be parts
that look great.
There will be some parts that
are a little bit buggy still.
And you get to do that
when it's only a week.
We're trying to focus
enough to give an idea
of what this actually is.
So what we have is the Cultural
History Baseball Cards brought
to you by the JSTOR Labs Team.
And the idea is that
you can pick a player
or historical figure, see
their cultural history card,
and then browse through
the primary
and secondary resources
about them.
These are organized right
now by the number of articles
in JSTOR about each of these.
And what's fun about this, and
if you even show the next 25
or whatever, first of all
it's not just players,
your Branch Rickey, your Bill
James, you have Marvin Miller,
you have -- this is not just
the players of baseball.
This is the history of
baseball sort of told here,
which is really exciting.
We envision, but before we
go live, that would be --
we'll have more than
just the article,
number of articles
on this homepage.
It will include the
number of videos
and images that we have as well.
Then when you click through
to an individual file --
who do we have?
Ah, Hammered Hank.
We have their baseball card
that has the data of the number
of articles and images
and videos
if we have them,
physical objects.
We're sort of still working
on the classifications
and how we map those
to the libraries
and Smithsonian's
classifications.
So those are at the top.
And then you can browse through.
If you're looking at
articles, you can see all
of the articles right there.
Click through them to get
access to them on JSTOR.
Or if you want to
look at the images,
it brings together the different
images from all the sources.
You can browse through those
images and then get access
to those images where
they're available,
the high resolution
image perhaps that's
on the Museum site or
the Library's site.
Then there are some printed
materials here as well.
And I'd just encourage --
I mean, so there's a lot of
exploring that you can do,
all organized around people.
When we talk to the user
-- the researchers --
and one of the things
that led to this was a lot
of them did want people.
They were interested in how
to connect the different --
the materials related
to each person.
They would say that, you know,
I know I'm doing research on --
I'm telling this particular
story, and I don't know
if this archive, you know,
is available at the Hall
of Fame, is it available here?
So if I could have a
way to connect those
and bring those together,
it could be valuable.
They also described that when
they first start their research,
they start with the
secondary literature,
so that would be the
scholarly articles in JSTOR.
And then they dive
in, do a deep dive
into the contextual material.
But that depends.
For students, they may want --
may benefit from
seeing the pictures
that help bring the history
to life and tell some
of the stories like we heard
just in the presentation
from the National Museum
of African American
History and Culture.
I think that's enough demo.
We could keep clicking
around and --
but let's go back
to the presentation
so we can get to questions.
One thing I should say is that
this -- I see this right now,
and the team sees
this right now,
as probably a little bit
more of a proof of concept
than full-fledged, you know,
research tool ready
for heavy lifting.
This is more of an idea,
an evocation of that idea,
to help people understand
what it could look like.
But there's still work to do.
If you -- oh, I get to click.
So there's still work to do.
So what we'll do, just so you
know, is over the coming week
or two, we'll fix
some of the things
that you might have seen
-- the alignment issues,
the bugs that we deftly
managed to avoid in demoing it,
and then we'll release
it as a proof of concept.
It will be available
in the labs.jstor site.
You can follow me on Twitter.
I'll announce it.
And we'll encourage everybody
to explore it and use it.
And I'll probably give
some presentations
about it -- conferences
and such.
Just so share what we've
learned along this way,
along this journey.
We do see some opportunity
for further development.
And the first one is
-- I think for this
to be a really valuable tool,
the amount of collections
and data that's included in
it needs to be more robust.
JSTORs great, the collections
at the Library of Congress
and the National Museum of
African American History
and Culture, that's some
really wonderful material.
But it feels still a little --
I think there's even more
that we can do by bringing in,
for example, the Digital
Public Library of America
or some other materials
and beefing that up.
So that would be work
that we would love
to explore sometime
in the future.
We also would love to explore
some crowdsourced improvement,
the knowledge craft
that we have is --
there are going to
be errors in it.
That's the nature of how --
what it looks like to bring
this material together,
photographs miscategorized,
or things like that.
So we'd love to have an
opportunity for people to,
you know, help improve
that, especially in a field
like baseball where there's
so many citizen experts
who can help us do that.
And then the last area for
opportunity, and again,
we'll see when we
can explore these,
is expanding the
concept beyond baseball.
I mean, they are baseball cards
but we can call them
trading cards.
But the idea of using people
as an exploratory tool
to multiple collections
is really exciting.
This is sort of a front end to
some of the work that's being --
that's working in linked
open data in Wikidata.
And you could imagine the
same kind of exploratory tool
for personages of the
Civil War or famous writers
or anything like that.
And so we'd be interested
in exploring any of those.
So before we get to questions, I
want to thank you for being here
and the Library of
Congress again.
I also -- and perhaps
most importantly,
I want to thank the JSTOR
Labs Team, so if you're
on the JSTOR Labs
Team, stand up.
We have Jared and Shubom
[assumed spelling],
Jared and Shubom and Jessica
and Matt and Ron [applause],
and Beth is sitting down.
She was sort of a
double agent this week.
They're amazing, and I am so
deeply privileged to be able
to work with these guys
who can pull this together.
My main job this week
was to buy coffee.
And I knocked it
out of the park.
All right.
Thanks. Are there any questions?
Yes.
>> I have a comment.
>> Alex Humphrey:
Oh, or comments.
>> Yes [inaudible].
>> Alex Humphrey: There's
a microphone [inaudible].
>> Yes, hi.
My name is Hollis Gentry and
I'm a Genealogy Specialist
with NAMOC.
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh, great.
>> The African American
History Museum.
I'm also employed with
the Smithsonian Libraries
and a long-time dedicated
researcher here
of JSTOR, and I love JSTOR.
So --
>> Alex Humphreys: We love you.
>> -- yesterday, after
registering for this,
I went online to play with
your text, the drop and drag --
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh, yeah.
>> -- and I have
one word for it.
It was absolutely awesome.
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh.
>> For someone who's done a
considerable amount of research
and trying to find related
data on just anything,
any given subject, because I
do reference, you know, work.
>> Alex Humphreys: Yeah, yeah.
>> It was amazing.
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh,
that's so wonderful to hear.
>> I just typed in,
for example --
we have a transcription project
where we're digitizing records
of Federal Government
records, millions of documents,
and I just typed
in one sentence.
I created a document and
all I said was, you know,
the [inaudible] Bureau was
founded on such-and-such a date,
Washington, D.C.
And it generated
thousands of hits for me.
>> Alex Humphreys: Yeah.
>> So all I want to say is keep
up with whatever you're doing.
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh.
Well, thank you.
>> And in terms of trying to
figure out ways to apply this,
you want to touch
with universities,
like you're doing
already with the scholars,
but there are different
nuances to that research
that I think you're going
to find as you reach
out to the universities in
the different subject areas.
But, again, all I can
say -- it was awesome.
>> Alex Humphreys:
Thank you, thank you.
>> I didn't have to
have any training on how
to learn how to do it.
I'm talking about I looked at it
and I said let me play with it.
In less than 10 minutes it
generated all of that material.
So that is [inaudible].
>> Alex Humphreys: I hope
somebody wrote that down
to get your quotes on
this because, dang,
that's a wonderful testimonial.
Thanks so much.
Any other questions or comments?
And we'll be around
over break and later.
Over there [inaudible].
There's a microphone coming
down to you, Orioles fan.
>> Hi. I'm Jordan Ellenberg.
I'll be on a panel
later this afternoon.
>> Alex Humphreys: Oh, cool.
>> I'm curious just because
I'm sort of naive about sort
of how this information
is controlled
and what accesses had to what.
I mean, if for your cultural
baseball cards you wanted to,
let's say, for each player
I want to see every time
that player was quoted
in the newspaper,
like every single
thing they said.
I mean, those archives exist.
What are the barriers to
somebody like you being able
to just build that in so I see
the complete journalistic record
of that player?
>> Alex Humphreys: The barriers
to that access have
to do with access.
I mean there's a lot of the in
copyright material for the --
you know, when we were
talking to the researchers,
showing them this, one
of the first things they said
was exactly what you said, like,
oh, my gosh, I want to see,
you know, how newspapers talked
about Roberto Clemente when
he was just on the team.
And they were, you know -- he
was forced to be called Bob
and I mean, just the, the
language was terrible.
And I want to see that and I
want to show it to my students
and help them understand
the context for it.
The biggest challenge to
that has to be with access
and copyright which
are reasonable things.
The way to overcome that is
through partnerships with people
who have, you know, things --
people like maybe ProCrast
[assumed spelling] or others
who have the aggregations
of newspapers.
And then we can create
pathways through there.
It's a little -- it's another
-- it's a bigger challenge to do
that than with the open
material that we have
with the Library of Congress.
So we often, when we're
doing these weeks,
focus on the open
material because it's easy
to experiment really rapidly,
and not worry so
much about that.
And then, once we've
proved the value of this
as a really nifty way
of doing research,
then approaching those
copyright holders or people
who have access to
those databases.
Does that answer your question?
>> Yeah, awesome.
Thank you.
>> Alex Humphreys:
Any other questions?
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
And I want to see what the
Library of Congress did
because it's competition.
[ Applause ]
>> Abigail Potter: Hello.
All right.
Sorry. I have a lot of --
we're going to start with
the starting line-up.
So this our team, here,
on your left, the --
every team [inaudible] is in
it's line-up, and this is ours.
We have Megan Ferriter, who
did a lot of the planning
for the overall event and did a
lot of coordination on our team;
Jaime Mears, who
you met earlier,
who was also very important;
myself, Abby Potter.
We're all part of Library
of Congress Labs Team.
We worked with folks from the
Office of Chief Information,
Office of the Chief
Information Officer, Chris Adams
and Grif Friedman and visiting
Archivist, Julia Hickey,
who we'll hear more
from in a minute
about what she actually
did with our baseball data.
And we had a lot of great help
from our summer class of interns
who are also around here.
You'll see them --
Ilene Jakeway, Yasira
Sweediz [assumed spelling],
Ann DeLot [assumed spelling]
and Courtney Johnson.
We were also coached by
the Library of Congress --
I mean, the JSTOR Labs, Beth
Duffert [assumed spelling],
and she helps us really
clearly define our goals
and move us along over the week.
So it's -- this was
a great team.
And we started there.
But, actually, we started
before then, during our warm-up,
which was our data prep.
And I'm going to let
Julia talk about that.
>> Thanks, Abby.
Good morning, everyone.
First I just want to say my
thanks to everyone I've gotten
to collaborate on this project.
Again, I don't work
with LC directly.
I'm employed by another
Federal agency
and so this has been an
incredible project for me
to work on, so -- and if you
ever get the opportunity to work
with LC Labs, it's amazing.
So, please take that
in consideration.
So what this slightly less
scary diagram here or chart is
than what Jaime showed
before is what I've come
to call the metadata crosswalk.
And so this is, in other
terms, a metadata map.
And you'll see in the first
column to your farthest side
over here, this is the
authoritative reference
for the map.
So this is the Merck data and
-- that the Library has related
to their digital collections
from general topic of baseball.
And to the next column over,
you'll find the JSON export.
So this is actually as,
I think, Jaime mentioned
through the tutorial, you can
learn how to do a JSON API call
and acquire LC digital metadata.
And we use that, we
plotted that back
onto the Merck data
and moved forward.
And the significance here
is that when we turn to look
at the National African
American and History
and Cultures collection
and their metadata,
we had to bring it all together.
And so holding the JSON
data and mapping it
into the Museum's data
was the significant point.
And where we get to provide
this dataset out to you.
And one of the unifying
factors was the next column
over from there.
And this is the Dublin Core.
It's a very common,
simplistic metadata schema.
And this united the data
in common field names
such what you see
in the final column
and what will be presented
in the final dataset.
Some significant
factors here to look
at would include the
Museum's Attributes Field.
You'll see that in the --
it's about third from the top,
or fourth from the
top, excuse me.
And you can follow that through.
And you'll see that's mapped in
a number of different fields.
And so this is just some of the
intellectual work you have to go
through when looking
at metadata,
to explore where it needs
to go into the right fields
for proper use, for
proper querying,
and certainly for unification.
And bringing two different
unique cultural heritage
institutions together,
there's difficulties.
But it's also kind of
exciting challenges to see
that LC's collection can very
easily talk through and with
and form this incredible dialog
related to baseball and all
of the subject matter you
saw the Museum present,
and what you get to explore
in our visualization as well.
So, with that, I'll turn
it back over to Abby.
Thank you.
>> Abigail Potter:
Thanks, Julia.
It seems less scary when
you say it like that.
Okay. So we started off
the week visiting our --
the Baseball Americana
Exhibit and we did
that to get us loose
and ready to play.
We were -- the docents
let us through,
and they told us what the main
themes of the exhibit are,
which are creating
and building community
and paralleling American
history.
So this -- when we were sort
of walking through the exhibit,
it led us to ask
sort of questions
about what we could
do during this week.
We wanted to know what else
our visitors might want
to see besides this exhibit, as
an extension of this exhibit.
We wanted to know what other
stories our collections could
tell and what different
possibilities
of presentation we could
use, because there's only
so much we can see
in the exhibit.
So in order to generate
sort of the ideas --
Alex really talked --
did a nice overview
of what this design
session was all about.
We had some really interesting
ideas come out of them
that I think we'd like to
pursue later, including sort
of different phone apps and
Snapchat filters and, you know,
just sort of fun things that
we think could bring our
collections closer to the
people who want to use them.
And this led us, really,
to think about audiences.
So we saw all the
work that JSTOR did --
interviewing the
potential users of our tools
and we saw how careful
they did those interviews
and got really useful
feedback that --
and, you know, that
created the persona.
And when we were watching
that work we thought, well,
I think with our
collections, with our exhibit,
with our focus, we have
sort of a different user
in mind who's more
of a lifelong learner
or a teacher who's trying to
teach people about community
or history and just
baseball fans in general.
So those are the users
that we had in mind.
Following JSTOR's lead,
we sort of jumped right
into user interviews and we
quickly created these mock-ups
of how we could display
our collections.
One's in a timeline.
We used Timeline JS, and one
in -- on a map, we used ArcGIS.
And these are just tools that
were sort of quickly available
to us that we wanted
to, you know, try out,
see what would work and what
people would respond to.
And we did get some useful
feedback on the concept
of displaying things
in a timeline or a map,
but we thought that maybe we
should have, we should sort
of go back and sort of come
near what JSTOR should have done
and start with a wire frame and
get sort of more information
about -- besides -- you know,
because there's a lot of --
when you're working
with a tool that exists,
there's limitations there
and what we learned is
that we should have
started from square one
and not sort of skipped steps.
So we used this for the
remaining of our user interviews
and we got a lot of useful
feedback on this drawing.
We heard that it could --
something like this could
be used in a classroom,
especially the timeline
aspect when teaching people --
teaching a subject
chronologically.
We heard that adding datasets to
our baseball collections data,
like a census data or income
data, would help tell the story
of how baseball -- use
baseball to tell the stories
like the Great Migration
or other sort
of big historical
movements that sort
of take up the whole country.
We also learned that it
would be meaningful to sort
of plainly show what the
gaps in our collections are,
what we don't have,
and sort of --
is there a way that we
can see that clearly?
And we also learned that
there's users that have a lot
of knowledge about what we
at our institutions have,
but knowledge that we don't
have about our collections.
So they're interested
in contributing to,
and adding their knowledge
to, the things that we do.
This [inaudible] typing also is
iterative and we, like I said,
we shared this with users, five
users, and with their comments
in mind, it sort of helps
us work through challenges.
So this is -- I don't know
if you can see this clearly,
but this is a -- our subjects
that we are dealing with.
So we had 19 columns of
subjects when we brought all
of our collections together.
And this is really
difficult to show to a user.
As you can see, the biggest sort
of subject is baseball card.
The second biggest is color.
And is that useful?
Is that -- trying to
-- so when we keep --
we think of our users, it helps
us sort of work through some
of these decisions of
how we might present data
about the subject of
the items to users.
So -- I mean to pass it over
to either of you to talk
about the -- so this
is a next prototype,
sort of after the
paper prototype.
This is what Chris made.
Do you want to talk
through [inaudible]?
>> Chris Adams: So, basically,
we had several stages here.
The first was getting all
of Julia's hard work pulled
out of the CSE files which
are one of our datasets,
and then geocoding them so
we could put them on a map.
So that was the early
part of the project.
We didn't have a
whole lot to show
because it was basically
here's some data,
here's a different file
that contains the same data
in a different shape, and then
we started actually being able
to do stuff like
put things on a map.
So this slide shows -- I think
this was Wednesday, yeah.
Tuesday was data ring,
then Wednesday we got this.
And then -- could we
go to the next slide?
Oh, yeah. So this
is a good thing.
So we actually had
three deliverables.
So we had the raw
dataset for people
who are comfortable working
with csv files directly.
We then pulled it into a new
experimental tool called the
dataset which is basically
just a SQL-like database
with a web interface which is
kind of nice because we can take
that data, you can write
any query you want,
you can just browse through
it and see what it is.
So for people who
want to be able
to really do advanced filtering
or [inaudible], but don't want
to write their own
code to do it,
this is a nice little
intermediate step
where you can go on a web
browser, you can look on things,
you can tweak it a little
bit, you hit some basic plots
and pull out the data.
And then the last slide
here is basically getting
into the tool we built
which is intended to be sort
of the general overview
to the collection.
So I guess if we wanted to we
could go to the Chrome Browser
at this point and actually
show the live version here.
But, basically, the idea here is
this gives you a way to view all
of the items in the
dataset on a map,
having the ability
to do a search.
So you can click on
any one of those pins
and you can see the items
that are in that location.
You can click on an item
and pull up the information
about that, and just scroll
down, it will pass the picture
and it will show the
metadata, the description,
one of the goals
that we didn't fit
into the sprint week was
actually linking all those
things so that when you
see something tagged
with a particular subject you
could then see everything else
in the collection
with that subject.
And then the last thing here.
You can just close this,
click anywhere on the map
because we want to reset the
selection to the whole list,
and then you can drag that
timeline slider up at the top.
Either of the ends can be
adjusted and you can just drag
that over and it
adjusts the whole thing.
And you can drag
the slider itself.
So if you wanted to, you could
pick like a five-year period
and then just scrub
that forward or backward
and see how them dataset
changes over time.
It will also work nicely
if you mention then --
if you put anything
in the text field.
So if you're interested in
a certain team or league
or place that's mentioned
in there,
you can filter all
of these together.
And so we were thinking,
this is the raw over --
this is the basic
overview of the data.
Somebody who's getting
here first,
they can get an idea
of what's in here.
They can follow specific items
back to the source institution
or up in the toolbar there we
also have the links right now
to the dataset and at some point
there will actually be the link
to the explanatory document
that says here's how
you download this,
here's what you can do with it,
here's, you know, the rights,
the known limitations.
And I really think
this was a nice way
to just illustrate how quickly
we can give somebody an overview
for what's in the data
so that they can confirm
that it even answers
the question they have
in the first place.
And maybe it inspires some
questions about why we have
so many pins in a row
[inaudible] obscure place
on the map or, you know, whether
there might have been some
confusion in what
you were searching
for matches somebody
you hadn't heard of.
It really is a good
way just to narrow
that down interactively before
you've invested any time loading
it into your favorite data
analysis tools [inaudible].
>> Griffen Friedman: Yeah, sure.
So one other thing we wanted
to focus on was the idea
of bringing in even more data.
So we're already aggregating
data from our collection here
at the Library and
the National Museum
of African American History
and Culture's collections.
Over on the right side you'll
see a mix of items there.
And it helps contextualize
these items.
You can look at them
in location and time
and really understand them.
But as a researcher, there
may be other information
that you want to
overlay on top of it.
Helps you understand
those even more.
So up on the top right of the
map there's a control there
where you can actually turn
on and off other layers.
And we've got two
example layers.
The first one shows stadiums.
So if you can check that one on.
That layer's actually
from data we found online.
So someone publicly made
available GeoJSON data
that shows all of current
stadiums in the U.S.
So it was very easy to take
that and overlay it on the map.
So that was demonstrating
you might find a dataset
in a standard format and
bring it in yourself.
And now you can make
more sense of the data.
The other thing we
did we we wanted
to see how hard it would be
for us to make our own dataset.
So thanks to hard
work on the team.
If you turn on the second
one, we built a dataset
that has team locations.
So this can sort of aggregate
with that other data.
It gives you a sense of
where teams are today
and where they were.
And you can start to look
at how the items correspond
to those team locations.
So this is just a sort of hint
of what you could
overlay on here.
It uses a standard format so
the idea is you could bring
in your own data very
easily and add it
to our collection and our data.
>> Abigail Potter: Great.
Whoops. All right.
We can go back to
the presentation.
I think we're just
about -- yeah.
So that link, that
short link there,
that is where the
current tool is now.
We're also going to be
linking that with -- at our --
on our Experiments
Page on Lab, so --
and we'll continue to,
you know, work on it.
So what's next?
The -- we do want to
finish building this
and we do want users to come
use it and give us feedback
and add different layers.
So we want to give some
instructions on how to do that
and we do similarly to JSTOR,
we are really interested
in different sort of
crowdsourcing aspects
of how this kind of
presentation of data could work.
We're interested in adding
different organizations,
different types of data
to our set, and continuing
to sort of learn more.
One of the big sort of
goals of this week was just
to sort of have this week.
So we're done now, so that
was a complete success, and --
but we really want to sort of
model this same type of process
with other groups, other groups
inside the Library of Congress,
other groups outside
the Library of Congress.
So we're really happy
with how everything went.
We're really excited to do
more of this kind of thing.
And I'm sure our collections
in different, in more ways
like we just showed you, and
like JSTOR just showed you.
So with that, that
is our demonstration.
And we can take any
questions that you have.
And I should also say, I'm sure
the NAMOC folks would also take
questions if you have
questions for them.
We have a question,
two questions.
Here we go [inaudible].
Yeah.
>> Could I see the
raw data that was --
>> Abigail Potter: Yeah.
We can go back to
the demo and the --
back to the browser and then
there's the raw data link
at the top.
>> I think you opened it.
It's like a -- the next tab.
>> Abigail Potter: Yeah.
Yeah.
>> So this is the SQL database
that you created and worked on?
>> Chris Adams: Yeah.
And the nice thing is if you --
>> Abigail Potter: Here.
>> Chris Adams: -- if
you click on items,
you'll see the raw item records.
But the other records --
and so you can see there's one
issue we didn't have to deal
with -- time to deal
with this week
which is normalizing
multivalue columns.
We have an answer to that;
it's just not ready yet.
But, basically, at
the top there,
there's a SQL Query Builder.
It's there so if you wanted
to, you could filter things
and just do arbitrary
expressions for how
to group or coalesce things.
So like one simple
example we use is
when we were just looking
is we have data coming
in from a number of sources.
And depending on what you
might want to use as the title
for an item, the answer can vary
depending on where it came from
and what metadata it had.
And in the SQL query we can
just say pick the first of these
that isn't empty
and pull that in.
And that makes it easier
to give somebody a link
that shows them the things and
not have to explain, oh, well,
for items like that go
look over in this column,
otherwise look -- you know,
we can just cut that out.
You've done that work once.
You don't have to
think about it again.
If we go back and click
on either the Geography
or Location columns, these
are also specific things
that were present in the dataset
and so one of the nice things --
we were able to geocode them and
then the viewer that we're --
oh, go back one more screen here
to the main list
of all the tables.
And click on either
Location or Geography.
There. This allows you
to view those directly.
It also just puts them
all on the map for you,
so this is a great way.
We were able to do the data QA
while the main viewer was being
worked on because somebody
else can go look at that list
and say, do we really have
an item from this location
or from the things that we got
out of the subject
list for Salisbury.
Was that -- Salisbury, Maryland
was what it geocoded to,
but it should have
been North Carolina.
And those are the kind of issues
that you have for any dataset
like this where we're trying
to link a non-precise
entity to a real value.
And that was great
being able just
to let somebody else
do that independently.
And this is, I think,
kind of a nice example
because you could
also explore this.
You could click on any
entry in that subject table
and it will show you which
items it's linked to.
So if you wanted to do some sort
of filtered query
you're just browsing
around that we didn't
anticipate,
that's there is a safety
mechanism before you get
to the point of well, now you
have to load the data and query,
build your own tool,
the query [inaudible].
>> Great. Thanks.
Can I -- one more question?
On a scale from first base to
home run, how fun was this?
>> Abigail Potter: How fun?
>> Griffin Friedman: How fun?
>> Home run [laughter].
>> Griffen Friedman: Yeah.
If this was all I was
working on this week,
definitely a home run.
I'd say a triple.
It was really great.
I work for OCIO here at the
Library, so I don't get to work
with the Labs Team all the time,
but it was really
wonderful working
with a really enthusiastic
group of people,
having Chris on the team.
Everybody just worked
really well together
and that certainly
makes it more enjoyable.
It was also really fun
to go from having nothing
to having a functional tool
and having that tool validated
by users and listening to them
say how useful it would be,
how they'd use it
in their classroom,
how they'd find things they
didn't think they'd be able
to find, and all
that kind of stuff.
So it was definitely
a great week.
>> Thanks.
>> Abigail Potter: Okay.
All right.
>> I'm just wondering
if you have a data that's
digitalization of the number
of baseball puns used
throughout the week.
>> Abigail Potter: We
have a running list.
Yeah. I think our -- Courtney,
who's [inaudible] our
Communications has utilized
almost all of them
I think [laughter].
But, yeah, that's a sub-goal
of the week, is to --
all baseball idioms
all the time.
All right.
Any other questions?
All right.
If there's no more questions,
then we will break for lunch
and then we are back
here at 1:15.
We will have a great
panel discussion
with some baseball
experts, scholars, and fans.
And we hope that you all come
back and ask your questions.
So we'll see you at 1:15.
[ Applause ]
Hello and welcome back to
our Inside Baseball event.
For this afternoon, we'll have a
great panel discussion featuring
-- moderated by our
very own Meghan Ferriter
who is a Senior Innovation
Specialist here
with the Library
of Congress Labs.
She's also a Sports
Scholar and using
that knowledge to
grill our guests.
Not grill them, but have a
conversation about baseball
and how it has influenced
and reflected our
history and culture.
I'm going to announce
the panelists
and they're all going
to come out here.
But I want to let you know
that this is being livestreamed
and the video will be archived
at the Library of Congress
so you will be able to
watch this again and again
and again if you want.
So, first the panelists.
Jordan Ellenberg is a
mathematician and author,
and he uses math to
uncover the hidden patterns
that guide our daily lives.
He's a Professor at the
University of Wisconsin Madison
and his book, Not
Not To Be Wrong,
The Power of Mathematical
Thinking is a New York Times
Mbest seller and one of Bill
Gates' 10 favorite books.
We also have Clinton Yates.
He is a radio host,
commentator, and columnist
for ESPN's The Undefeated ,
and a Washington Post alumnus.
A D.C. native, Yates's work
examines the intersections
between pop culture,
politics, race, and athletics
in contemporary American life.
And then, finally,
we have Rob Ruck.
He is a Sports Historian and
Professor at the University
of Pittsburgh whose research
traces the dynamics of race
and major league baseball.
He's recognized as a
authority in the history
of the Negro Leagues
and Latinos in baseball.
Ruck's recent publications
include the 2011 book,
Raceball .
So we'll get started
with our panel first
by welcoming them out.
[ Applause ]
>> Meghan Ferriter: I think
it only matters so we're not
so close to each other
that we can't hear each
other afterwards.
Well, thanks so much
everyone for being here.
Thanks for those of you who've
tuned back in to the livestream
if you were here earlier.
I already, JSTOR Labs Team,
already have some feedback
on things that would
be extremely helpful
for sports journalists
and performing research using
cultural history baseball cards.
And if you're just turning
in to the livestream again,
you may have missed
this morning.
We had some sessions where we
were describing a week-long
process of exploring collections
from the Library of Congress,
the National Museum of African
American History and Culture,
and articles in JSTOR
and the JSTOR databases.
It gave us some starting
points of conversation.
But the whole reason that we
wanted to do this and connect
with you all is that we have a
Baseball Americana Exhibit here
at the Library, opened
only about two weeks ago.
We're hearing a lot of
really interesting things.
And we started our week
with a tour of that.
We're going to end our week
with another tour of that space.
And we heard from the docents
that some of the themes
that they are emphasizing
and the stories
that they are telling are
around convening community
and paralleling America's
history.
So I wonder if -- Jordan,
you want to lead us,
I mean step into the
plate first here?
Don't worry.
We'll talk about some language
in baseball idiom as well.
What are your thoughts
around the way
that baseball brings
people together?
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Well, yeah.
I guess I'll -- it's like
batting practice, right?
I'm like coming first
to the plate before you.
>> Meghan Ferriter: So --
and they're both a little bit
of a softball team [laughter].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Well, at
least to me what I think is one
of the things that's
so interesting
about the community
of, let's say,
fandom around the
baseball team --
well, that's not the only kind
of community around baseball.
There's communities of players,
there's communities of people
who work in baseball,
et cetera, et cetera.
But when I think about
the community of fandom
which is the community
that I'm a part of,
I think it's interesting
in sort of like how chosen
of a community it is, right?
I mean, many of the communities
that we're part of,
we are born into.
You know, we don't choose our
family, we choose our history.
We do, on some level, choose
our team that we root for,
and yet our commitment to
that, I think for most of us,
emotionally I think it feels
-- it it okay to say this?
Like just as deep as [inaudible]
historical communities
that we're a part of.
And I think that can be like a
really good learning [inaudible]
to think about like, boy, what
does community mean if I feel it
so strongly at the same time
as -- I chose it myself.
I could have chosen
something else.
In some instance it's
arbitrary as a, I think,
Jerry Seinfeld said,
you're rooting for laundry.
Yes, but it matters.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Clinton,
Jordan's speaking a
little bit to passion.
And you do a lot of
communicating with people
in various media spaces --
on radio and TV and
social media spaces --
and I think social
media's a place
where interesting
communities convene.
>> Clinton Yates: This is true.
>> Meghan Ferriter: -- to
bring a person to session.
Would you share some maybe
things that you've seen recently
in those spaces that
you think is either new
or interesting about
communities?
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
I mean, I think one of the
the things that's forgotten
about baseball is -- you know,
you can talk about the history,
you can talk about the math,
but in the sport itself
the communal contact
of how it exists.
Everybody has to watch
two people do one thing
and that is a very interesting
relationship in terms
of how it forces you to
understand the concept of team
and the concept of performance
and the concept of failure in,
you know, the communal sense.
And I think that's a large part
about why people attract
themselves, you know --
baseball is attractive for
them and why it explains
about how you have
to communicate.
There's an umpire,
there's a manager.
Everybody on the
bench wears a uniform.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it's very different
communication in terms
of the basic fundamentals of
the game that I think apply
to how people relate
to it, you know?
So the laundry in one way is
very important in a certain way
because you're not wearing
helmets, you know what I mean?
You're not wearing shorts.
You're wearing pants
and a shirt that button,
and a belt, you know
what I mean?
Like it is very much about a
sort of very normalized process
that I think brings a
lot of people together.
When you're talking
about social media
and how different people come
toward it, everybody is allowed
to like, as a result of all
those different things going on,
a different part of
the game, you know?
And that's very much, I
think, what attracts a lot
of people to baseball.
Most people who like
baseball probably --
I say this all the time --
probably never know how
to score a game, you know?
But they enjoy the
environment around it.
They enjoy the sounds
and sights of the game
without even necessarily
caring what happens.
And that's a large part
that baseball brings
to the American sporting
landscape.
And I think a lot of other
sports have not found a way
to tap into it.
And why, ultimately, it is
considered America's Pastime is
because it doesn't
change much, you know.
And people kind of like
that because people enjoy
that in their communities.
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Speaking about numbers
and people not being able to
like maybe create a scorecard,
fill it out, even
read it afterwards --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Meghan Ferriter: -- and know
what different annotations mean.
We had a lot of people who
asked us questions about --
as we were working on building
prototypes, we'll begin to bring
in statistical data, and we
said, well, we want to tell some
of these cultural stories.
So, Rob, I wonder if you
can reflect on the types
of communities that formed
around baseball in Pittsburgh
and some of your work
that you've shared
about those types
of teams and people.
>> Rob Ruck: I'm glad you're
not asking me a statistical
question [laughter].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I'm here.
Don't worry [laughter].
>> Rob Ruck: Jordan's
got that covered.
You know, I'm must more
interested in what sport means
to people than the game itself.
And when you look at a
place like Pittsburgh,
where baseball was the sport,
was the pastime,
for quite a while.
No longer is.
You see that it allowed
different groups of people
to feel included in
a sense of community.
I mean that whole notion of
baseball as the ultimate vehicle
of Americanization
for the children
of immigrants I think
is pretty valid.
Where that broke
down, of course,
was over questions of race.
And during the half
century or so
that the Major Leagues were
segregated Black Pittsburgh
created a sporting
world of its own.
And an amazing one, with
two Negro League franchises,
seven of the first 11 men
from the Negro Leagues elected
to the Hall of Fame
came from Pittsburgh,
and many more ever since.
But you look at that
community, that black community,
which was fractured
by geography,
by whether they were the Old
Pittsburghers who had come
from the northern part of
the South in the 1890s,
who were better off, better
educated, and lighter skinned,
or those who came during
World War I and after
from the Black Belt
who were not,
you saw that it created
a sense of community
for Black Pittsburgh
which allowed them,
as the Negro Leagues
formed in the '20s,
and had this archipelago
of franchises
in these norther cities, to
feel a part of Black America.
And I think that had a
profound impact on the ability
to build cohesion and a positive
sense of collective self
which lasted for quite a while.
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Thank you very much
for sharing more about that.
During lunch today we
talked a little bit about --
Clinton led us out
on this one --
describing the ways
that professionalization
of Major League sports may
make the sport less enjoyable.
So I wonder if you can --
because it's predictable,
I should say, not
less enjoyable,
predictable in the sense of it's
routine, there's less variety,
there's less excitement
over what might happen.
And so I wonder if you, Clinton,
if you'd like to respond
and maybe lead on your thoughts
on this, some of the ways
that amateur sport or collegiate
sport and how baseball formed
in those communities or in those
spaces tell us different kinds
of stories than professional
sport.
>> Clinton: Yeah.
I think that's actually a
large part of why this sort
of regionalization of
baseball has led to this sport
at the highest level
of not being as popular
as other leagues is that
Major League Baseball acts
like they're the only form
of baseball that exists when,
in reality, you look
at somebody like me.
I grew up playing baseball.
I played in RVI here in D.C.
I can name you, within a,
you know, a couple
of relay throws,
10 fields I played
on in the city.
And that is what baseball
is to me, you know?
People tell me all the
time, like oh, my god,
how do you watch
college baseball.
I can't deal with
the metal bats.
Well, you must not have played
a lot of baseball growing up.
I don't know anybody who's
playing wood bat leagues,
you know what I'm saying,
when you're a kid, you know?
That's not real.
So what are you talking
about, right?
And so what I'm saying -- and
the reason I bring that up is
because it is -- it's
important to understand
that like what you're referring
to in terms of the Negro Leagues
and how that sense of community
came together was about more
than just achievement
at the top.
People played because they
liked playing baseball,
and that's what's cool about it.
You know, you go to
a high school game.
People show up because their
kids are there to play.
They don't plan to
go to college.
They're not trying to
necessarily make the pro's.
They enjoy spitting
seeds and talking trash
with their friends, and
they enjoy hitting the ball
and picking it up
and putting it down.
And so if your only
sort of understanding
of what the game is exists
from just the top level down,
you're really selling
yourself short on a lot
of what the community of
baseball is, you know.
That's why I go to so
many minor league games.
That's why I liked
coaching baseball,
because you're involved
with it on a community level
that is more than just about
the achievement, the contracts,
the trophies, you
know, and the TV time.
And that ultimately, to me,
is what gives back a lot more
than any nonsense I
see on television.
You know, it's knowing the
people I know from the game
and what I was given
as a human in terms
of understanding what it took
to, you know, make it work.
And that's still something
that sticks with me.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I mean,
if I can jump in on that.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Of course.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I mean,
but it's about this one thing.
I mean, I -- because I spoke to
it in the story from this kind
of top-down point of view.
But it's very true that,
you know, if you're a fan
of like your favorite sitcom
or something, you're not going
to set up like four TV
cameras with your friends,
like make your own
sitcom at home, right?
I mean there's -- the only way
you're going to experience it is
through the professional
[inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: You're talking
about YouTube, man [laughter].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: No, it's
probably more now than before,
but -- but, you know, as you've
seen with baseball, with respect
to regionalization, you
know, I grew up in Maryland
and hardly anybody I knew
played Little League.
Like now I live in Wisconsin
and what I have learned is,
you know, my son
plays and I go there
and like there's parents
there whose kids are not even
in the game.
People in Wisconsin just --
they'll just drive down to
the Little League field --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
-- because you know one
of your neighbor's kids is going
to be there and like, you know,
you're going to see
people you know --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: --
or something like that.
I mean -- so I think it
is like really different
in different parts
of the country,
and there you see this extremely
organic kind of fandom --
or I shouldn't even
have called it a fandom,
but an organic involvement
with baseball at --
and if you think college
baseball is unpredictable,
you know, watch --
the 12-year-olds,
that's a different
story entirely.
I mean --
>> Clinton Yates:
Tell me about it, man.
>> Meghan Ferriter: I'm thinking
of two different
lines of thoughts.
So I'm going to put
them together
in the same [inaudible].
I've heard a little bit
of mention here about some
of the artifacts or objects of
baseball, some of the things
that are -- metal bat
versus a wooden bat,
the uniform that you wear,
what you're representing.
And in some of our work at
the Library, we're looking
at these collection items.
We're thinking a
lot about the data.
But there's also
the representation
of [inaudible] as an image.
What does that show us?
And I wonder, Rob, if you can
share or reflect on how some
of -- spaces of baseball
or items or objects
of baseball are changing, and
how that connects to the types
of -- the forms of baseball
that we see played today
or other people have
played in the past.
>> Rob Ruck: Most of the work
I've done on baseball's been
in the Caribbean or
in black communities,
looking at baseball pretty much
before integration [static].
There's virtually no artifacts.
What you have are memories.
If you're lucky,
you find photos.
The amount of footage is scant.
I think, you know,
the last 25 years
or so is baseball has
become overcapitalized.
There's increasing stuff.
But in some ways, to
me, it has less meaning.
It's noise.
The same way I feel when I go
to a Major League ballgame,
which is why I don't feel it's
as enjoyable as a Minor League
or a Caribbean or a
Little League game,
because you can't even hear
the person next to you talk.
You feel overwhelmed by it.
So I'm probably not the one
to answer your question.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Oh, I think
that's a perfect way to connect
to spaces that may
be disappearing
or still in [inaudible].
Go ahead, Clinton.
>> Clinton Yates: As
I was there recently
and I wanted to point it out.
My mother, who was
in the crowd --
she's from Kansas
City, Missouri.
And in Kansas City, the Negro
League Baseball Museum is there.
Bob Kendrick is the
President of that facility.
And what it does
is -- to your point
about things being
scant, that is very true.
There's not a ton.
But there is a lot of it there.
And what it does
that's interesting,
and this is not necessarily
correlated.
I just thought to bring it up.
You realize that
what it chronicles is
as much the history of
America as it is the history
of many things necessarily
baseball.
It really is, you know?
And that's sort of
what you're --
speaking to your point about how
sports affects people, you know,
one of the first women owners in
sports was in the Negro Leagues.
One of the first times
where they, you know,
they played in those outside
view as communities first,
be it the Caribbean, be in
Japan, be in wherever, you know?
And it is scant, but it is
not non-existent, you know?
And I think that's why
collections and things
of this ilk are important
because everything
at some point becomes scant
because you can't
keep everything,
you know what I mean?
But there are collections
that do these jobs to keep
around what, you know,
what people could.
And it is, it's really
fascinating
to look at, you know, this --
>> Rob Ruck: To reinforce that.
I mean, there's a reason
why Buck O'Neil was the star
of Ken Burns's work on baseball,
and I think a much
more important figure
than Shelby Foote
in the Civil War.
And Buck's memories and stories
and reflections steal the show.
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Rob Ruck: But it underscores
how much your point is
that questions of baseball are
questions of American history.
And perhaps no more so
than when it comes to race.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
I'll, first of all,
just second the recommendation
of the incredible Negro
League Museum in Kansas City,
which is like, I think, one
of the best history museums
in America that I've been to.
And then it's also to say I
think what you say is very
right, and I think -- you
know, so I teach math.
That's what I do for a living.
And I find that one way
I tell stories about math
as a teacher is to tell
stories about baseball
because baseball touches
math like through statistics.
And in the same way, I think,
you know, you teach history,
Rob, and I think because
baseball touches so many things,
as teachers one of the ways we
can teach whatever subject it
is, like whether it's history,
whether it's sociology,
whether it's African American
Studies, whether it's math.
We can teach those through
the lens of baseball
because baseball
touches them all.
It's not just the story
of American history,
but is the story of
American history.
It's the story of like all
those things put together.
And you can meet -- I mean,
you know, I meet a lot of kids
who don't think they
care about math,
but they know they
care about baseball.
They know they care
about arguing
about which player is
better than another.
You may -- I mean, you know, a
kid who's a little kid today.
You say, like, you
know, there was a time
like when a black man
couldn't go to Woolworth's.
They'll be like,
what's Woolworth's?
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Like
-- but if you say like,
not everybody could play
Major League baseball.
I mean that's -- I think
that's as meaningful
and kids feel it as [inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: I was there.
It's a huge discussion in
sports around the world, I mean,
because I happen to be of
the opinion that anybody
who played before
integration, I'm sorry,
you're throwing your
records out, like I just --
as a matter of course
they're not [inaudible].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: And they
don't call it the White League.
>> Clinton Yates:
That's right, right.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
And that's a huge point
of contention for --
because a lot of --
the most famous players
in people's minds ever played
long before integration,
you know?
And so that -- yeah, it touches
on a lot of different things.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: But I
think the math people get that,
by the way.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: If you talk
to the mathiest [assumed
spelling] people
who study baseball statistics,
I think they understand
that there's like a discount
that you have to [inaudible]
that you can't avoid that.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah.
And they just kind of -- we've
encountered this this week
in trying to bring forms of data
that don't match each other,
the way the terms and the
pieces of words that we use
as subjects we give things.
As professional organizations
that categorize information,
how there may be a
disconnect between the kinds
of stories we're talking about,
the ways, the oral histories,
the discussion, the ways that
people talk about baseball
or life in general, which
includes recounting being
at a game or being with someone,
meeting someone at a game,
knowing where you were when
kinds of conversations.
So I wonder if any of you
want to share anything
about the ways you think memory
can be connected to talking
about baseball or where you
may have recently have found
something that was
surprising when someone did try
to describe something
to you about baseball.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
Most story --
I don't know if this is
like answers your question,
not that I just acknowledged
talking to you.
A very elderly cousin of
mine who, unfortunately,
just died about a year
ago, Marilyn Sachs,
who was a children's book
writer, and from one thing --
I mean, when I talked to
her a couple of years ago,
she was pretty old and her
memory was not completely there.
But she was telling me
a story I never knew,
which was that how she met her
husband in the '40s in New York,
was that they were both
Communists and they were
on a door-to-door
drive, knocking on doors,
getting a petition
signed for the Dodgers
to bring Jackie Robinson
up from the Minor Leagues.
And that was like their first
date, the fact it was going on,
not in Brooklyn,
knocking on doors trying
to get other Communists
to like sign this petition
to like get Jackie
Robinson up to the Majors.
>> Meghan Ferriter: There's so
many intersections there, right?
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
And that's [laughter] --
>> Meghan Ferriter: How do you
know which one's to go with?
>> Clinton Yates: There
ain't [inaudible].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: And
they were Jews [inaudible].
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Yeah, there you go.
>> Clinton Yates: I do
a thing on social media.
[Inaudible] I go to basically,
and it's for that exact reason,
is that it -- while
I'm doing it,
it provides memory of the game.
I can share it with
other people.
People can understand
that there's more to it
than just sort of
looking at it, you know?
And I think that that's a oddly
-- not oddly, but that is,
I think, where baseball sort
of scores, pardon the pun,
over a lot of other sports, is
that there's a memory element.
This for me, it's very different
than a lot of other sports.
I remember -- you know, the way
I remember baseball games is
by the notation.
And there's not necessarily an
apples-to-apples comparison fro
different -- other
sports, you know?
And that's why I do it is
because it's there,
it's available.
I was pissed this year
when the Nat's, by the way,
like didn't allow
their scorecard.
You know, they stopped giving
away scorecards and I'm
like what are you doing?
[ Applause ]
You know what I'm saying?
I was like, how do you -- like
you're instantly deleting half
of the reason why people are
going, is to remember the fact
that they were there, you know?
And if you kind of
like pay x -- so.
That is a huge part
of baseball in a way
that I think is very
different in a lot of respects.
>> Meghan Ferriter: I think
that connects a little bit also
to some of the things
we mentioned,
just briefly passing by before.
Ways that some
of our collections
actually surface exclusions,
what's not there,
different types of artifacts
that might represent types
of activities related
to baseball, people, even roles.
We see a lot of players
or baseball cards
that represent players.
We have some managers' papers.
We have oral histories.
But we don't necessarily
have all the stories
where people are
reflecting specifically
on their experiences
of baseball.
In your respective fields, we --
I have to get a plug
in about this --
we have resources that
may be useful to you.
If you were going to be looking
for different types of research
or be performing research
or wanted to connect
with the Library of
Congress and its collections,
what might be types of objects
and/or collection items you
would be interested in?
>> Clinton Yates: Hmm.
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Putting them on the spot.
>> Rob Ruck: You know, when
I started doing research,
it was going through microfilmed
newspapers, putting a dime
in every time I wanted
to make a copy.
No laptops, no word processing.
And I kind of get angry
when I see how easy it is
to look at things [laughter].
The flip side of that though --
>> Meghan Ferriter: I'm sorry.
We're trying to make
it way too easy.
>> Rob Ruck: -- is
that when I'm listening
to all the stuff you've
brought together, I mean,
I feel if there was a
subject I was interested in,
I'd be overwhelmed by the amount
of material and information.
And it seems to me the next
step is not just to make all
that universe of material
possible, but figure out how
to filter and prioritize so
that I can tell my grad students
to do it [inaudible]
my expectations.
>> Meghan Ferriter: This
week we -- oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
>> Clinton Yates: I think what
would be most valuable to me,
and I think about this
as somebody that doesn't
like television at this
point, would be able to --
if you could categorize
how you see things,
like if I said I want to see
every homer that happened
on July 17, 1988,
you know what I mean,
like around the league
or whatever.
Like those kind of
specificities for visual --
even if I could listen to them.
You know, radio calls
or whatever.
Like that to me would be
cool because you could --
for whatever reason the way
my brain categorizes things,
like this day in history
kind of stuff, really is --
speaks for me, you
know what I --
and that that to me would
be a very valuable resource
to know like, you know, what
was happening on this day
in the world, nevermind in
a ballpark, and kind of look
at them all in the same space
and sort of compare them and go
from there as to how I look at
the rest of the globe, you know?
That to me would be critical.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: And
that's what I love about images
of old newspapers, right?
Because it would be the base --
the story about the
baseball game.
And next to it, you know --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
-- there's like a story
about like strikebreakers
and police or there's a story
about like what's happening
in Asia, or like whatever.
And you sort of see like,
okay, not just what happened
on the baseball field, but the
people who were experiencing
that in the time, what
else was on their mind?
You know what I mean?
That puts it in context.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Well,
I promised we would talk
about baseball idiom
and language,
so let's talk a little
bit about the ways
that baseball is
integrated unexpectedly
into American vernacular.
As someone, Clinton, as someone
who's a sport journalist,
you probably encounter this all
the time and have to find ways
to not use sporting
analogy all of the time.
>> Clinton Yates: This is a
tough one for me, right --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah.
>> Clinton Yates: -- because
I'm also a massive baseball fan
that talks in baseball lingo
just as a matter of course.
So I don't --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah.
>> Clinton Yates: That's hard.
I mean I just realized
I did that earlier
when I said it's a
couple of relay throws --
it's like a distance
of [laughter] --
space that I use in my mind.
And so that's -- I'm going to
listen on this one [inaudible].
>> Meghan Ferriter: Well, if
we think about maybe listening
about rather than direct
language like metaphors
of baseball and whether
or not baseball --
we can understand other --
we're arguing in our exhibit
that you can understand American
history through baseball,
or you can see direct metaphor
for particular points in time
or the ways that people
organize themselves.
Do you have any reflections
on that, Jordan?
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
I mean I want to say
that in some things we're
like the exact wrong people
to answer this question
because, like, we're immersed
and we hear those words and
that language is alive for us,
so we know what's
being referred to:
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: And what
I suspect is that for a lot
of Americans in 2018, they
will say, give me strength.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: But they
may not even know that refers
to -- or maybe -- I mean,
what I would compare it
to is the way I feel.
I think what happened
to our language is governed
by nautical metaphor.
And, you know, you say
like somebody's three
sheets to the wind.
Like I don't know what
the hell that means.
Look I feel like the sheet
was probably [inaudible]
like attached to the boat
and then there was like wind.
I mean
>> Clinton Yates: Maybe
a mast was involved, like
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Yeah.
Like there's no way that
doesn't have something
to do with a boat.
I'm like that's -- you know,
that's fossilized
language to me.
That's gone.
And maybe if there's like
any sailors in the audience,
like can they tell
me what it means.
But I think I -- to be
honest, I think for a lot
of Americans today, a lot
of that baseball language
is probably like that.
They're sort of like dimly aware
and have something
to do with baseball.
But they can't really
put a reference to it.
And yet they know what
sort of that word means
in English vernacular.
And you should ask
them [inaudible].
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah.
I want to [inaudible] --
>> Clinton Yates: I mean, not to
mention -- I mean, that's not --
just be real about the
incarceration policies
in this country just involving
three strikes and how --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yeah, yeah.
>> Clinton Yates: -- like
that's as real as it gets,
you know what I mean, in terms
of putting people behind
bars vis-à-vis the concept
of like a baseball
metaphor making sense
as to why you should be in
prison for the rest of your life
as kind of crazy, you
know, [inaudible].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Where
now we think of three strikes
as like -- oh, yeah,
that's the [inaudible] --
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
I would put them in cage
baseball if I was in jail
for three -- you
know what I'm saying?
Like yeah, like --
because that's --
you know -- but whatever.
That's sort of a
different discussion.
But, yeah, I mean
that's, to me, is --
that's drilling down
as far as you can go
for taking away people's
freedoms based on the notion
of what happens when you're in
a batter's box as determined
by an umpire based on
a pitcher and a catcher
and [inaudible] like
that's crazy.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Picking
up on a little bit of a thread
that you had there,
Jordan, of that --
of you not being the
right people to ask.
I disagree.
I think you're the
perfect people
to ask these kinds of questions.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Okay.
>> Meghan Ferriter: But I
also wonder if you can --
kind of related to what
you both are talking
about of being removed -- taking
baseball out of its context,
and there's -- this could be
a slightly controversial view
or it could be something
that you think is true,
this idea of a decline of
baseball as America's Pastime,
or that should it still
be America's Pastime?
>> Rob Ruck: I don't think there
is a national pastime anymore.
I mean, I think that sporting
interests are fractionalized.
Clearly the NFL is the most
successful economic sporting
league in U.S. sporting history.
Even that could be at some
sort of existential crossroads
for a number of reasons.
You know, I look at my students.
And I've been teaching
the History of Sport
since the late '70s at the
University of Pittsburgh.
And it was easy to discuss
baseball and to have
that common shared knowledge.
And I think Jordan's point
is right on the money.
They don't have the
language anymore.
They don't have the memory.
I can talk about Bill Mazeroski
and Clemente, and a lot of them,
you know, they'd rather I'm
talking about Leonore Messi.
And it's -- I think
we're past that point
where we have one
collective sporting experience
that is defined by
a single sport.
>> Clinton Yates: I'll
tell you this though.
And this is something that
I don't know that it's --
I know that a lot of
Americans take it for granted.
If you go to another country and
you throw something to somebody,
they will likely take
it as an assumption
that you were throwing it
at them and not to them.
And that is a very
interesting thing about how --
I mean, just -- I'm saying
though, like you did -- no.
You get my point, You know what
I mean is that like that --
on a very interesting base
level, whether or not they care
about baby league baseball or
whatever, the simplest part
of the game is something that
is integrated into our society.
Remember, you all,
hey, catch this.
It's not going to freak you out.
You know, you're
probably going to catch it
and you're probably going to
be able to send it back --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Yes.
>> Clinton Yates: --
without much of an issue.
And that's why I think baseball,
not changes the past time.
It will simply exist in a
different part of our brains
as a sporting level, but what
the actions are are very much,
very much engrained
in our, in who we are
in this society, you know?
Throwing and catching is
a pretty standard American
operation, you know.
>> Meghan Ferriter: That's the
perfect segue into a question
about whether or not --
or do you view baseball
as an international sport.
And I think there's maybe
certain places in the world
that we think of as
connected to the United States
through baseball in a
professionalized way,
but you may also have other
reflections that you want
to share about amateur
or community sport.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I
mean, I think it's both.
I mean, I think baseball,
more than it ever has
been, is a world sport.
But it's also a world sport
whose home is the United States.
I mean, I think -- I don't think
there's any contradiction there,
that the U.S. is
kind of the temple.
And I think it's still true that
like the greatest world players,
their ambition is to not play in
Korea, like not play in Taiwan,
like not play in Mexico, but
to play in the United States.
And I kind of like
about it that it's a --
but it's a different mix, right?
It's not like -- the NBA has
become a world sport, too.
But it's like a different
mix of countries.
Baseball has this
kind of like, you now,
sort of a Pacific orientation,
right, where it's like --
>> Clinton Yates: I wish.
I mean, I'm being honest.
Like that's going to be the
death of major league baseball,
is being concerned about
being too American.
I mean that's, you know,
really the way it is.
You look at the culture
of the game.
You watch some world
baseball classic
where different nations
field different squads.
You know, you've seen this,
you now, with your scholarship
on the Caribbean and so forth.
It's a totally different concept
than what the game even
is, you know what I mean.
And so from an entertainment
standpoint,
nevermind the participation
standpoint, it has to be global
in order for it to survive.
And that's sort of the
large mistake, I think,
that the big leagues is
making, is that they're trying
to make it very much this sort
of puritanical nonsense
that's boring and, you know,
you go to so many
different places
and it's just -- it's more fun.
It's a different thing.
And it has to be global in
order for it to be, I think,
real for a lot of people.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
[Inaudible] baseball classics.
You get like lots of teams
from different countries
and they're not playing in the
same styles as American players.
>> Clinton Yates:
One thousand percent.
Oh, yeah. Like that
-- I mean, that's --
I mean, we could break this
down on a strategy level,
we could break this
down on a style level.
You could break it down
on a communications level,
you know what I mean?
This way -- the way people talk,
the way that people run bases,
the way the people,
I don't know --
the aggressiveness with
which, you know, the strategy
with which they use the game.
It is very different
in different places
across the globe for sure.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: And
[inaudible] about the kind
of stultifying conformity of the
kind of this is how it's done,
and if not, then this other way.
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
That -- and I --
>> Clinton Yates: It sucks.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: --
a hundred percent in
agreement [inaudible].
But it's interesting.
I would have said -- I mean,
I've never noticed the
players who [inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: Okay.
I'll give you a great
example of this.
Clint Hurdle is the
Manager of the Pirates.
Clint Hurdle was a number
one pick in the draft.
Clint Hurdle hit like 40
bombs in his 10-year career.
And Clint Hurdle has been
managing in the Big Leagues
for God knows how long.
And Clint Hurdle is not a
good manager [laughter].
Bobby Baez is probably one
of the most exciting
players in all of baseball.
Javier Baez hit a bomb
against the Pirates in --
you know, hammed it a little.
And Clint Hurdle went off about
how this is not how you do this
and this is not how you do that.
And I'm like, you know,
Clint Hurdle was a bum
compared to Javier Baez.
You know what I'm saying?
And like that -- and he just --
he didn't appreciate the fact
that he was celebrating
something he had done well.
I mean, that right there showed
me exactly all you needed
to know, a random white guy
who was not a very good
player felt the need to scold,
you know, a young Latino player
who was showing too much emotion
for what he felt was
appropriate to the game.
And that, to me, is a
massive problem with baseball,
just as a matter of
course, in general.
You know what I'm saying?
That's -- come on.
You know what I mean?
Like we're going to have fun.
We're not here to talk
about unwritten rules.
>> Rob Ruck: I'll let
you slide on fertile.
But just [laughter] -- don't
dis my column [laughter].
>> Clinton Yates: I'll bet.
>> Rob Ruck: Getting
back to your question.
The Major Leagues have
always seen themselves
as the temple of the game.
And they've always
wanted to dominate.
But, frankly, MLB was never
the only game of baseball.
And a hundred years ago the best
white and black players went
down to the Caribbean
and played winter ball.
During the summer, players
from the Caribbean came
and played either Major
or Negro League Ball,
depending on whether
they passed for white.
The demarcation point
is integration.
And in the years after that,
particularly with the expansion
of different media and
the ability to broadcast,
the games in the islands and
in Mexico increasing sucked
into MLB's commercial organ.
And that's what I
think is deadly.
I agree with you
totally about the style.
I mean a Cuban game,
a Dominican game,
a Nicaraguan game,
differ from MLB.
But what's even more fun is
the style in the stands --
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Rob Ruck: -- where it's just
not piped-in music all the time.
Or, you know perogy races.
It's just real action.
And it's a far more
exciting experience.
>> Meghan Ferriter: I might
connect back to this idea
of community in experiencing
a game you mentioned.
We've heard this a couple
of different times
in the conversation.
We've talked about coming
together in a sandlot style
and how people share information
or connect with one another,
or the way they anticipate or
plan their runs to the bathroom
or next snacks because they
know what's coming up ahead,
or they need -- they want to
get on the camera if they're
in a professional
sporting space.
So what are some of the ways
that you think baseball
might provide --
and Jordan,, maybe ask you
to speak to this baseball
as an experience provides
the opportunity for people
to come together or
learn something new
about the place that they are.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Well.
I'm supposed to talk
into this now?
Is that [inaudible]?
Okay. I mean I'm going to say
something like very simple
about it because I think
there's this very primal things
where in your life it's actually
pretty rare that you're among
like a large group of people
whose attention is focused
in the exact same place
on the exact same thing.
That's an uncommon experience.
>> Meghan Ferriter: All
of us here today, right?
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
All the way.
All of us were not
on our phones, right?
I've had that experience
[inaudible].
No. The -- I mean, okay.
[Inaudible] a little bit
embarassing the story myself.
But I took my kids to
the eclipse last summer.
Like we drove down to Missouri
and went to the eclipse.
And I did, you know, standing
there in this big field
with like all these people,
like all kind of looking up
and seeing the sun slip away.
I was like, oh, yeah.
Like this is like
baseball, right [laughter].
Like everybody here,
like this big huge crowd,
all looking up at this like
round thing in the sky, right?
Like they're all
in the same place.
But the point is that does
not experience [inaudible]
very much.
So I don't know if
that experience --
if it's meaningful.
It's meaningful without actually
meaning any particular thing,
right?
It's like meaningful
in this very primal way
that I think it feeds some kind
of desire for mass experience
that we rarely are offered.
>> Clinton Yates:
I think [inaudible]
in a point there's some --
I'm not really sure this
answers the question,
just something I thought
I wanted to highlight
because of the sort of the
dichotomy of the situation.
But a couple of years ago
when there were riots,
I'm using air quotes for
those of you listening
on YouTube, in Baltimore.
They always played a
game where they locked
up the entire stadium.
They didn't let anybody
into the ballpark
and they played a Major
League Baseball Game.
And I remember thinking at
the time -- I was at the game.
And I remember thinking, because
there was probably 50 people
there covering the game,
which was another super
bizarre element of this.
But I remember thinking at the
time like we have really failed
as a nation on a lot of fronts
if we're legitimately playing
baseball games in front
of nobody for the sake --
[ Applause ]
You hear what I'm saying?
Like for the sake of
the game continuing,
but the actual experience being
robbed because of some concern
about something that may
or may not happen
outside of the ballpark.
And it was eerie
on a lot of levels.
And to the O's credit, this year
they've instituted this thing
where you can bring your
kids to the ballpark
for free if they're under 10.
And you can sit up in the crowd
because nobody's there anyway.
And so [laughter] I just --
I mean I'm not saying
-- it's not a knock.
I mean that's a legitimate way
to get people in the ballpark.
And the reason I bring
that up is because it was
such a stark contrast of
how, in the same place,
different experiences can
be so different and can make
such a profound impact
on a community.
And I remember talking
to people, you know,
around the ballpark on what
I called the Ghost Game,
and they were mad.
They were like who
does this, you know?
And now, you know, Camden Yards
is one of the nicest ballparks
in America, and I just --
to me I -- it was very --
an interesting example
of the evolution
of what I think it kind of
needs to be like, you know,
a lot of people [inaudible]
ballpark and people will
like their sport more.
Like that's pretty obvious.
And to me that's a large part
of the experience is the biggest
patch of grass that a lot
of people are ever going
to see in their lives
in one place, you know?
And [inaudible] people
should experience that.
>> Rob Ruck: You know I think
that this thing about sports is
when you're playing it yourself,
when you're participating.
The next best thing
is when those
who are competing are people
you know and care about.
We get further and
further removed
until we become these consumers
primarily on TV or on our phone
or something, of people who
live in different zip codes.
And I think if you flip it
historically with baseball,
between World War I and
World War II there were 4-
or 500 independent baseball
teams in Western Pennsylvania.
The two Negro League
teams, you had the Pirates.
But the independent sandlot
and community teams drew
far more people each week
than the professional clubs.
And a lot of the people who
were playing were people
who were playing into
their 40s or 50s,
and 40 or 50 was relatively old.
And they were playing
in the neighborhood
where people could walk to
work, walk there after work,
throw some money
in a passing hat,
and either see people
they cared about
or be a part of the action.
And that to me is when sport
provides the most community.
I think we've gotten several
steps removed from that.
>> Meghan Ferriter: I want
to pick up on something
that you mentioned
earlier, Clinton.
And you and Jordan had a
little bit of a conversation
about this, about some
of the greatest players
playing before integration,
and also the ways that --
so we've got a couple of
press cuttings [inaudible].
I only have two more questions.
This is the second to last.
So this is a question that's
about what types of patterns
that you've seen in history,
Rob and Clinton and Jordan.
And maybe you're thinking about
the numbers and what types of --
what would you think is the
most important type of statistic
or form of playing baseball or
pattern from players in the past
that we've lost in today's game?
>> Clinton Yates: Math Man.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Oh.
I mean, if he means -- if
you really mean statistic,
then I think the answer
is nothing I can --
just statistical richness
with which we understand
the sport today is just
like vastly greater than it
was in any point in the past.
So I actually think we
have everything we had
in the past and like --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Then
the numbers are consistent
over time --
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
And that's my point.
>> Meghan Ferriter: -- and
other things have changed.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I mean,
well, apart from the fact that,
you know, as Clinton brought
up, there was like differences
in playing conditions like
literally who was allowed
to play and who the competition
was and who was pitching to you.
So that, obviously, is something
that you have to do separately
from a numerical computation.
But I think, you know, the
age of statistics that sort
of really gets started in like
the late '70s, early '80s.
Like when Bill James
goes big and sort
of makes this a mass
market thing.
>> Clinton Yates: Does everybody
here know who Bill James is?
Is like that's just
a [inaudible].
I mean --
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I'm leaving
that people don't
who Bill James is.
I'm [inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: Why is that?
I mean I --
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Bill James
is the guy who brought kind
of modern statistical
analysis of baseball.
People were doing it, but Bill
James was the person who was
like I can sell my books in
the B. Daltons and Waldenbooks.
And maybe nobody knows
what B. Dalton [inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: We got
further away [laughter].
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I'm the --
like he was the guy who had
the kind of quixotic belief
that like I can make this
like a mass market thing.
And now, you know, you go
to Miller Park in Milwaukee.
There's like OPS and WHIP
like on the scoreboard,
on the big Diamond Vision.
It's like right there
for everybody to see.
I did not think I would see
that happen in my lifetime.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
And I'm of the party --
maybe it's obvious
that I would be --
who thinks that's an
unalloyed good for baseball.
I don't think that
replaces our fandom
with spreadsheets
or number crunching.
I think it just adds;
it doesn't subtract.
>> Clinton Yates:
I'm really interested
to hear what you think about
this in terms of the way
that this statistical
forms of baseball has sort
of overtaken -- I
mean, you know,
between launching
[inaudible] and [inaudible]
and all this other stuff.
Like I imagine this is not
very popular in your world.
>> Rob Ruck: Well, I
stopped understanding math
after Woodstock [laughter],
and a lot of other things.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Wow.
What did you take [laughter]?
>> Rob Ruck: You know the --
when you look at all the stats,
you just don't have
that for Black Baseball.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Rob Ruck: You don't have
that for the Caribbean.
You're using a ball which
would have been thrown out if,
you know, it was scratched
or hit the ground
once in the majors.
These guys might have played
most of a game with it.
They're playing with
terrible lighting on fields
that are not going to
give you a true hump.
So the statistical stuff for
that era mean little to me.
You know that Joe DiMaggio
can say Satchel Paige is the
toughest pitcher he ever
faced, or when I would talk
about the Negro Leagues
in Western Pennsylvania
and have guys who played
for their coalminer team,
white guys, stand up and
tell me how proud they were
that Josh Gibson hit
a home run off them.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Rob Ruck: That
resonates with me.
You know, the stuff
you see in box scores
from those days --
it's shaky stuff.
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
And when I watch a
game now, I mean,
the fun part is the stat --
I mean the stats are part
of the game and the context
of it is part of the notation,
it is part of the record.
Like I said, I keep
score at games so that --
that's sort of different
than statistics, obviously.
But, you know, that's just --
that's a part of the
game that I'm not going
to say I don't care about
because that's not true.
But it is not -- it is
behind the action, you know?
And that's, that's -- but
that's also why it's cool,
because you never -- you know,
you don't remember
these things, you know.
That's what they're there for.
But, you know, the most
important stat to me is always
when everybody forgets about
votes, which is runs scored.
The player who scores
the most runs
on a team is typically the best
player on the team [laughter],
just so you know that.
Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Actually,
can I -- I could have --
I want to -- can I follow
up on that question, too?
>> Meghan Ferriter:
You may, of course.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: Am I
allowed to like usurp --
>> Meghan Ferriter: Of course.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
-- momentarily.
Okay. Because I think when I
think about what's different
about the way the fans
today experience baseball --
I don't think, actually, the
new regime of statistics makes
that much different in how.
I think, as you say, when
people are watching them
when they watch the game is does
the guy cross the plate or not.
And that's what they're
watching.
But what I think is truly
different is to the extent
that people's interaction
with the business
of the sport is part
of their fandom.
I mean, then you brought
it up when you talked
about how it has become
more distant and more
of a consumer operation.
I mean, it kind of blows my
mind that my son, he's 12,
he loves playing baseball
games on his phone.
And he has one game where
he's like the hitter
and a little pitch comes
and then he sort of tries
to hit the phone
at the right time
to make the bat hit the ball.
But he has another game
where he's like the GM
of a baseball team
and he has like --
he thinks of both of those as
baseball games on the phone.
You know what I mean?
And I do think that
for this generation
of fans thinking okay, like,
how many compensatory draft
picks am I going to get
if I trade this player
at this time?
It's part of what they're
thinking about, not just like is
that third baseman
going to like --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
-- be able to like get
over [inaudible]
to make that play.
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: That's
a little bit foreign to me.
And to me, I think that -- and
I'm curious what you guys think
about that as -- in terms of
this next generation of fandom.
>> Clinton Yates: The
League Manager is sort
of what you're referring to.
And there's games that are
based solely on that, you know,
where you're not even playing
-- like video games, you know,
like actual consoles, you know,
where that's all you're doing.
That -- I don't need
that personally.
I mean, that's not a knock.
And I just -- I just don't --
>> Jordan Ellenberg: This is
like the old man
portion of the program.
>> Clinton Yates: Oh, no.
I mean [laughter] --
>> Jordan Ellenberg: He's
worried about the [inaudible].
>> Clinton Yates: I mean
I -- well, to be fair,
I'd say the reason I don't do
it, because I'm not smart enough
to get a handle on it.
I mean, that's what
it comes down to.
I mean, at the end of
the day I like playing
because that was the easy part.
Figuring out all this other
nonsense was hard, you know.
So, that's not for me.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Okay, one
last question and I'm going
to connect it back to our
Collections at the Library.
We recently digitized
Branch Rickey's papers
and released them, so
anyone can explore them.
And we heard a lot of
feedback publicly from people
who were surprised and
excited to see different kinds
of information within
the scouting reports
and correspondence.
And my question is,
what is an enduring myth
that you think you would
like to either dispel
or you recently myth-busted
yourself about baseball?
>> Rob Ruck: Hmph.
>> Clinton Yates:
Interesting question.
>> Meghan Ferriter: You
can take your time today.
>> Clinton Yates: Well, I
think a story worth noting
about Branch Rickey that
may not necessarily go
into the myth context
though, is that --
I'm not going to say
that integrating baseball was
not the most important thing
that he did, because
I don't believe that.
But people don't know
that Branch Rickey tried
to start a third league like
the -- there was a whole --
it was the National League,
there was the American League,
and he tried to start
the Continental League.
And I -- part like
-- I always think
about what would have
happened if that had been real.
You know what I'm saying?
Like he had managed to --
>> Meghan Ferriter: That
sounds like a great pilot.
>> Meghan Ferriter: -- if he
had managed to pull that off,
like we're just some
third league
where the big leagues were
now, you know -- there was --
I don't know, insert
15 more cities
where there were just
Big League Teams now.
That would have gotten
sort of subsumed
into the large [inaudible].
I think about that all the
time in terms of who he was
because it was more -- like he
wasn't just some dude trying
to get, you know, one
brother into the big's.
That wasn't what he was.
He was a totally larger
baseball mind in terms
of so many different
things for a business
and a growth standpoint.
And that oddly gets
forgotten a lot, you know,
which understandably --
obviously Jackie Robinson's
importance to America and,
you know, baseball is huge,
and Branch Rickey's
involvement, and that was major.
But that dude was much
bigger than that in terms
of the specificity of the
sport and trying to grow it
on an expansion level
in terms of [inaudible].
>> Rob Ruck: Not to pile on
Branch too much, but you know,
I think whoever described
him as the person
who taught Machiavelli the
strike zone was on the money.
And, you know, I thought
you were going to talk
about the fact he built
a farm system in the '20s
which monopolized
hundreds of kids --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Rob Ruck: -- for
the Cardinals.
You know, Branch Rickey gets a
lot of credit, and I think a lot
of it has been demolished
for integration.
He's not doing it over
a social conscience --
>> Clinton Yates: Right.
>> Rob Ruck: -- question.
He's doing it to monopolize
talent, win championships,
and improve the bottom line.
And, you know, to me a more
interesting proposition would
be, what if they had brought
in Negro League Clubs
in the late '40s?
And the Negro League
Clubs, after integration --
>> Clinton Yates: Yeah.
>> Rob Ruck: -- which witnessed
their fanbase crumble overnight,
petitioned Major
League Baseball --
bring us in as a
high minor league.
And [inaudible] didn't
even answer.
And you could, you know
-- if that had happened,
then you wouldn't have the
Al Campanis Movement in 1987
where there's no black managers,
GMs, front office, or ownership.
We're a little bit better
now, but not all that much.
>> Clinton Yates:
Not by much at all.
>> Meghan Ferriter:
Well, thank you so much
for chatting with
me exclusively.
Let's open up to
questions here in the room.
Oh, we got one right
there, enthusiastic.
So we have some microphones
for you to bring around.
>> Rob Ruck: Water?
>> Clinton Yates: Ah,
yes, please [inaudible].
>> All right.
Charles Martin.
Thanks to Rob Ruck
again for your blurb
on my book, Lawyerball .
I'd like to make a statement
and a proposal regarding
this stultifying conformity
of baseball, the existential
turning point of baseball.
I suggest that they
have the same --
they relate to the same problem,
and they have the same solution
which is that baseball,
thanks to the Major Leagues
and to the Congress in
whose library we're sitting,
is one of the few
legal, economic cartels.
And Mr. Yates, the Continental
League would never have
succeeded because baseball would
have used its 1922 Supreme Court
Exemption in the
Anti-Trust Laws to kill it.
This is how economic
cartels behave.
They do no innovate.
They kill competition.
And the way to solve the
existential problem of people
like Rob Ruck no longer enjoying
going to baseball games,
baseball games taking three
hours, kids not knowing
who Mazeroski and other people
in history are is competition.
You introduce competition,
you will save the game.
The game is great.
It's hard to kill.
But Major League Baseball
and Congress are doing
their best to kill it.
>> Clinton Yates: Is
this where we applaud?
[ Applause ]
>> Hi, this is Gates Ward.
I was just wondering
if you ever think
that we'll see a woman play
in a non-exhibition Major
League Baseball Game?
>> Rob Ruck: No.
>> Clinton Yates: And I
think the reason for that is
because I would rather just
watch women play baseball
against other women than I would
necessarily some, you know,
notion of egalitarianism
through competing against men.
I like have a huge issue
with that on a lot of levels,
mainly just because --
for example, Serena Williams is
my favorite athlete of all time.
Do I think she's the greatest
tennis play of all time.
People like, you mean
for women, right?
And I'm like, dog, that's
not -- first of all, no.
And, secondarily, that's
not what that is, you know?
And I would like to see
more opportunities for women
to play baseball, period.
And if it has to come only in
the world, in the framework
of doing it against a man,
that's a major problem for me.
[ Applause ]
>> Questions relating
to the exhibit stairs.
The first question is, the
exhibit really focused a lot
on the evolution of baseball
and I was wondering what
the panel's position was
on the current changes
in the baseball rules,
whether it be raising the
mound, as what, 20 years ago
or introducing the DH,
or even the new rules
that they're trying
to speed up the game
by introducing differing things.
As a historian or as
an ESPN commentator
or as a mathematician
or statistician,
how does that change the game
each time they introduce a new
rule, or does it change the
game for the better or worse?
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I mean,
I'll just say this
as a mathematician.
I value elegance a lot,
and I think this concept
of having a runner start
on second base is the most
cockamamie thing I've ever
heard [laughter].
I can't even say that it would
make the game better or worse.
It's just ugly.
And I don't like ugliness.
So I oppose it on that ground.
>> Clinton Yates:
I went to a game
in Nashville probably a month
ago, and if you don't know this,
in AAA they've got pitch clocks.
It's -- what is it?
It's 30 seconds between batters,
15 seconds between pitches,
20 if there's a runner on base.
And, okay, you know,
like whatever.
Conceptually do I have
any problem with this?
And I realized that my
only issue with it was
that there's clocks
on the field.
And like the huge cool
part about baseball is
that there's no dang old clocks.
And it's like the whole point.
And there's like three
or four clocks around,
so there's this sort of constant
countdown happening in your mind
which was a little bothersome.
But then they played
nine innings
for like seven runs in the game.
That bad boy was over in like
two hours and 15 minutes.
I was like, whoa, okay.
Like maybe I can kind
of deal with this.
And so I'm not really sure
because on the surface
it's annoying,
but it worked, you know?
It kept it moving.
And if that's what your goal
is for baseball, then, sure.
But my position on this has
always been that it's the nature
of the game, batted balls and so
forth, that what happens on --
during the course of the
game is what changes people's
excitement, not just
the length of time.
Inserting seven dudes between
the sixth and the ninth
for [inaudible] is annoying,
you know what I mean.
Like that's, that is
far more aggravating
than just the amount
of time it takes.
Instead you're constantly
stopping and starting,
and what you're getting
isn't action.
It's not, in fact,
that exciting.
That to me is a larger issue
than people don't actually
like what's happening, not
necessarily how long it's taking
in any amount of time.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Have we --
have time I think for
-- oh, sorry, Jordan.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: No,
that's okay [inaudible].
>> Meghan Ferriter: One
more question if it's quick,
and maybe another
one after that.
>> Okay. I'll try
to make this quick.
Do you think that the owners'
preoccupation with making money
in the Major Leagues especially
has limited the availability
for families, and obviously
it has, to go to the game?
But the importance
of going to the game,
having the same experience as
somebody like me that grew up
and is 50 years old now,
would go to the game and end
up behind Home Plate even
though I bought a ticket
out in the outfield.
And now if you try to go to
it and do that now and have
that same experience of actually
hearing the communication
between the dugouts and
the umpires and the batters
and stuff is just -- you
don't have the same experience
when you go to the
game and you go
with family of four to a game.
>> Jordan Ellenberg: I'll say
there's one thing I think modern
baseball is doing right, and I'm
interested to hear your takes,
too, is that I think the modern
baseball stadium, the cheap,
faraway seats are really good.
And that was not true when I
used to go to Memorial Stadium
as a kid in Baltimore.
I got to Miller Park now and
I go to Camden Yards now.
I buy an -- I mean, I like to
buy an expensive seat sometimes,
show off my kids, whatever.
But like I -- if I sit in
the bleachers it's still --
you really feel in the game, and
think it was way that was not
as true in the older stadiums.
So in that one respect I
actually think they're doing
more to equalize the
experience [inaudible] more,
and people [inaudible] less.
>> Clinton Yates: That's
an excellent point.
I hadn't ever really
though of it that way,
which is that the
stratification between the best
and the worse is not
necessarily that different.
You know what I mean?
I hate sitting behind the plate.
For me it's a bad
view, and I'm not --
you know, you're
looking through a net.
Like I don't actually
like that seat.
But I do think there's
something to be said
about the family experience.
But, I mean, when I
go to baseball games,
like I really kind
of only see families.
Like I don't -- you know,
I'm not really sure what the
other side of that complaint is
because while, yes, it
is extremely expensive
in the basic context of the
value of a dollar, like I don't
like -- I don't know who
else is going to ballgames.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not like people are
just walking off the street
that much necessarily
outside of, you know,
random businessmen specials or
whatever, which, by the way,
I still never understand.
Like businessmen's specials.
Like what -- why is it called
that, you know what I mean?
Is it dudes leaving their aunt?
Like what is this, you know?
That's such an --
[inaudible] integrated terms.
That is an integrated one.
But I guess what I'm saying --
that there is still a lot of
families going to ballparks and,
you know, without delving
into the intense economics
of why it costs so much
to go to games, you know,
it's still a fun experience.
And that to me is
hard to evaluate.
Like if you don't like
it, you don't like it.
But if you go there,
you're probably going
to have a good time.
And that to me is, I guess,
effectively the most
important thing overall.
No? I mean is that --
does that make sense?
>> Rob Ruck: I would
just add that I think
that the smart franchises
in the smart sports
are cultivating kids,
and building them as fans.
And I've seen the Penguins
do that in Pittsburgh
by making a large block
of tickets available
at moderate prices
to college students
and the success of
the team itself.
But you know I think,
for example,
in the Dominican Republic, where
you go to some [foreign words]
and before a game you
see 30 or 40 kids seated
on the outfield walls
with poles with nets
at the end to try to snag balls.
And they become lifelong
fans in the process.
>> Meghan Ferriter: Great.
I think we will wrap up here.
I want to thank everyone for
joining us in person and also
on the livestream, and
especially thank Jordan,
Clinton, and Rob for spending
the afternoon with us.
If you are watching, we will
be archiving the livestream
and make that available to you.
We encourage you to
visit the [inaudible].
What's that?
>> Jordan Ellenberg:
The [inaudible].
>> Meghan Ferriter: The
[inaudible] on YouTube.
We also encourage you
to visit the exhibit
if you haven't seen it yet.
And I think I will pass back
over to Abbey to wrap us
up here in this event.
>> Rob Ruck: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Abigail Potter:
Well, thank you so much.
That was such a great
conversation.
I wish it could be hours
longer, but [inaudible].
I don't know.
It would be [inaudible].
The Tigers.
Transition year.
It's fine [laughter].
>> And decade.
>> Abigail Potter: But this is
just a very short wrap-up just
to thank everybody that
came, thank everybody
from the JSTOR Team
who's still around,
who really made this week
very -- just packed with --
I want to use baseball idioms,
and I just can't think of them.
But it was a really,
really wonderful week,
and I think this conversation
just put a big exclamation point
on it, and I just
want to thank everyone
for coming and tuning in.
And thank you, Megan,
for moderating
that nice conversation.
[ Applause ]
And go see a baseball game.
And go to the Library.
Okay.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.